CHAPTER VI
The Power of the Dog
1
Marigold wakened one September morning earlier than her wont, when all the eastern sky was abloom with the sunrise, because she was going to school that day. She did not know whether she was glad or sorry, but she did know she was very much interested — and a little frightened. And she was determined she would not show she was frightened. For one thing she was sure Old Grandmother would have scorned her for being frightened; and Old Grandmother dead had somehow become a more potent influence in Marigold’s life than Old Grandmother living. For another thing, Marigold had always felt that Mother was a little bit disappointed in her that night at Uncle Paul’s. Of course that was ages ago when she was a mere child of six. She was seven now, and it would never do to show you were frightened.
She lay happily in her bed, her two little silver-golden braids with their curling ends lying over her pillows, looking out of the window beside her. She loved that window because she could see the orchard from it and the cloud of spruce. She could lie in bed and watch the tops of the spruces tossing in the morning wind. Always when she wakened up, there they were dark against the blue. Always when she went to sleep they were weaving magic with the moonlight or the stars. And she loved the other window of her room because she could see the harbour from it and across the harbour to a misty blue cloud behind which was her dear Hidden Land.
Marigold was sure nobody in the world had such a dear little room as hers — a room, too, that could only be entered through Mother’s. That made her feel so safe always. Because night, even when you were seven, was a strange though beautiful thing. Who knew what went on outside in the darkness? Strange uncanny beasts were abroad, as Marigold had good reason to know, having seen them. Perhaps the trees moved about and talked to one another. That pine which was always stretching out its arms to the maple might go across the orchard and put them around her. Those two old spruce crones, with the apple-barn between them in daytime, got their heads together at night. The little row of birches along Mr. Donkin’s line-fence danced in and out everywhere. Perhaps that slim little beech in the spruce copse behind the barn, who kept herself to herself and was considered very stuck-up by the spruces, escaped from them for awhile and forgot her airs and graces in a romp with her own kind. And the hemlock schoolma’ams, with a final grim fingershake at terrified little boys, stalked at large, shaking their fingers at everything. Oh, the things they did were int’resting beyond any doubt, but Marigold was just as glad none of them could come walking up the stairs into her room without Mother catching them.
The air was tremulous with elfin music. Oh, it was certainly a lovely world — especially that part of it which you entered through The Magic Door and the Green Gate. To other people this part of the world was only the orchard and the “big spruce-bush” on the hill. They knew nothing of the wonderful things there. But you could find those wonderful things only if you went through The Magic Door and the Green Gate. And said The Rhyme. The Rhyme was a very important part of the magic, too. Sylvia would not come unless you said The Rhyme.
Grandmother — who was neither Young nor Old now but just Grandmother — did not approve of Sylvia. She could not understand why Mother permitted Sylvia at all. It was absurd and outrageous and unchristian.
“I could understand such devotion to a flesh-and-blood playmate,” said Grandmother coldly. “But this nonsensical imaginary creature is beyond me. It’s worse than nonsense. It is positively wicked.”
“Almost all lonely children have these imaginary playmates,” pleaded Lorraine. “I had. And Leander had. He often told me about them. He had three chums when he was a little boy. He called them Mr. Ponk and Mr. Urt and Mr. Jiggles. Mr. Ponk lived in the well and Mr. Urt in the old hollow poplar-tree and Mr. Jiggles ‘just roamed round!’”
“Leander never told me about them,” said Grandmother, almost unbelievingly.
“I’ve often heard you tell as a joke that one day when he was six he came running in out of breath and exclaimed, ‘Oh Mother, I was chased up the road by a pretending bull and I ran without hope.’”
“Yes; and I scolded him well for it and sent him to bed without his supper,” said Grandmother righteously. “For one thing he had been told not to run like that on a hot day and for another I had no more use for pretendings then than I have now.”
“I don’t wonder he never told you about Mr. Ponk & Co.,” thought Lorraine. But she did not say it. One did not say those things to Grandmother.
“It is not so much Sylvia herself I object to,” went on Grandmother, “as all the things Marigold tells us about their adventures. She seems actually to believe in them. That ‘dance of fairies’ they saw. Fairies! That’s why she’s afraid to sleep in the dark. Mark well my words, Lorraine, it will teach her to lie and deceive. You should put your foot down on this at once and tell her plainly there is no such a creature as this Sylvia and that you will not allow this self-deception to go on.”
“I can’t tell her that,” protested Lorraine. “You remember how she fretted when her Sunday-school teacher told her that her dead kitten had no soul. Why, she made herself ill for a week.”
“I was almost ill for a week after that fright she gave me the morning she slipped out of bed and went off up the hill to play with Sylvia at sunrise, when you were in town,” said Grandmother severely. “Never shall I forget my feelings when I went into her room in the morning and found her bed empty. And just after that kidnapping case in New Brunswick, too.”
“Of course she shouldn’t have done that,” admitted Lorraine. “She and Sylvia had made a plan to go across to the big hill and ‘catch the sun’ when it came up behind it.”
Grandmother sniffed.
“You talk as if you believed in Sylvia’s existence yourself, Lorraine. The whole thing is unnatural. There’s something wrong about a child who wants to be alone so much. Really, I think she is bewitched. Remember the day of the Sunday-school picnic? Marigold didn’t want to go to it. Said she’d rather play with Sylvia. That was unnatural. And the other night when she said her prayers she asked God to bless Mother and Grandmother and Sylvia. I was shocked. And that story she came home with last week — how they had seen three enormous elephants marching along the spruce hill and drinking by moonlight at the White Fountain — by which I suppose she meant the spring.”
“But that may have been true,” protested Lorraine timidly. “You know that was the very time the elephants escaped from the circus in Charlottetown and were found in South Harmony.”
“If three elephants paraded through Harmony somebody would likely have seen them besides Marigold. No; she made the whole thing up. And the long and short of it is, Lorraine, I tell you plainly that if you let your child go on like this people will think she is not all there.”
This was very terrible — to Mother as well as Grandmother. It was a very disgraceful thing to have a child who was not all there. But still Mother was unwilling to destroy Marigold’s beautiful dream-world.
“She told us the other day,” continued Grandmother, “that Sylvia told her ‘God was a very nice-looking old gentleman.’ Fancy your child learning things like that from a playmate.”
“You talk now as if you thought Sylvia was real,” said Lorraine mischievously. But Grandmother ignored her.
“It is a good thing Marigold will soon be going to school. She will forget this Sylvia riff-raff when it opens.”
The school was half a mile away and Grandmother was to drive Marigold there the first day. It seemed to Marigold that they never would get off, but Cloud of Spruce was never in a hurry. At last they really were on the road. Marigold had on her new blue dress, and her lunch was packed in a little basket. Salome had filled it generously with lovely heart-shaped sandwiches and cookies cut in animal shapes, and Mother had slipped in some of her favourite jelly in a little broken-handled cream jug of robins-egg blue, which Marigold had always loved in spite of its broken handle — or because of it. She
was sure it felt it.
It was September and the day was true September. Marigold enjoyed the drive, in spite of certain queer feelings born of the suspicion that Mother was crying behind the waxberry-bush back at Cloud of Spruce, — until she saw The Dog. After that she enjoyed it no more. The Dog was sitting on the steps of old Mr. Plaxton’s little house and when he saw them he tore down to the gate and along the fields inside the fence, barking madly. He was a fairly large dog, with short, tawny hair, ears that stuck straight up, and a tail with a black spot on the end of it. Marigold was sure he would tear her limb from limb if he could catch her. And she would have to go to school alone in the future.
She rather enjoyed the day in school, however, in spite of some alarming, sniggering small boys whom Marigold decidedly did not like. It was quite delightful to be made a fuss over, and the big girls made such a fuss over her. They quarrelled as to whom she would sit with and finally settled the matter by drawing straws. Lazarre called and took her home when school came out, and there was no sign of The Dog. So Marigold felt quite happy and thought school was very nice.
2
The next day it was not quite so nice. This time Mother walked to school with her and at first it was lovely. There was no dog at Mr. Plaxton’s gate but on the other side of the road was the Widow Turner’s great flock of geese and goslings with a huge gander who ran to the road and hissed at them through the fence. Marigold would not tell Mother that the geese frightened her and very soon she forgot about them. After all, a gander was not a dog; and it was delightful to be walking along that beautiful road with Mother. Marigold probably forgot everything she learned in school that day, but she never forgot the tricks of the winding road, the gay companies of goldenrod in the field corners, the way the fir-trees hung over the bend, the long waves going over Mr. Donkin’s field of wheat, and the white young clouds sailing adventurously over the harbour. The road ran up the red hill, and the rain in the night had washed all the dust from the rounded clumps of spice fern along the edges.
Then they crossed a brook, not on the plank bridge but on a dear little bridge of stones, where they could see the pearl-crested eddies around the dripping grasses; and then came a dear bit of wood where balsam boughs made music and all the little violet-shadows were stippled with sunlight, and they walked on a fairy path near the fence, over sheets of lovely moss, almost up to the green corner where the white schoolhouse stood. Marigold would have been perfectly happy if she could have forgotten The Dog and the gander.
No, school wasn’t quite so nice that day. The big girls did not take much notice of her. There was another new pupil, with amazing red-gold, bobbed curls, and they were all agog over her.
The teacher made Marigold sit with a little girl named Sarah Miller, whom she did not know and did not like; and a hateful boy across the aisle chewed gum and grinned at her alternately. When he chewed his ears waggled, and when he grinned at her his face was that of an unholy imp. He came up to her at recess, and Marigold turned her back upon him. Plainly this Lesley puss must have her claws clipped at once.
“You’d better get your mammy to bring you to school every day,” he jeered. “If she don’t, old Plaxton’s dog’ll eat you. That dog has et three people.”
“Et them!” In spite of herself Marigold could not help turning round. The Dog had such a terrible fascination for her.
“Body and bones, I’ll tell the world. One of them was a little girl about your age. Dogs always know when folks are afraid of them.”
Marigold had a queer, sick, cold feeling. But she thought Old Grandmother would have made short work of this impudent boy.
“Do you suppose,” she said cuttingly, “that I am afraid of a thousand dogs?”
“You talk big like all the Lesleys,” retorted her tormentor. “But just you wait till that dog gets his teeth in your shin and you’ll sing a different tune, Miss High-and-Mighty.”
Marigold did not feel very high-and-mighty. And when she asked Sarah Miller if geese ever bit and Sarah said,
“Yes. Our old gander flew at me and knocked me down one day and bit me,” Marigold felt that life was really too difficult. How was she ever to get home? There were no other children going her way. Mr. Donkin had no children nor Mr. Plaxton nor Mr. Ross nor the Widow Turner. Lazarre’s children and Phidime’s went to the French School “over east,” where Marigold had so long ago dreamed the Hidden Land was.
Then Uncle Klon came along and took her home in the car. The gander hissed at them and The Dog flew down to the gate and howled his head off at them. He was really a very noisy Dog. Marigold did not say a word of her fears to Uncle Klon. She couldn’t bear that he should think her a coward either. She talked the matter over with Lucifer, who had no opinion of dogs at all.
“Not that I have ever had anything to do with them,” he admitted. “But I’ve heard that a dog insulted one of my ancestors.”
When Marigold said her prayers that night she prayed most earnestly that The Dog might not be there the next morning.
3
Mother wanted to take her to school again but Grandmother said,
“There is no use in pampering her like that. She may as well get used to going alone, first as last. There’s nothing on the road to hurt her.”
“There are motor-cars.”
“There are very seldom motor-cars on this road so early in the morning. Besides, they’ll be there to-morrow just the same as to-day. Marigold must learn to walk on the side of the road and never cross it.”
Marigold was not afraid of motor-cars. She loved to see them go purring past in the violet dusk, with their great golden moons of eyes, and sometimes turning in at the gate, making strange magic with their shifting light on trees and flowers. Even in daylight they were int’resting. But tawny dogs as big as lions and enormous hissing ganders were quite another thing. She had not slept all night for thinking of them. Suppose there wasn’t any God! Old Cousin Malcolm-over-the-bay said there wasn’t. Suppose The Dog should be there? Suppose the gate should be open. Suppose he could jump over the fence. Suppose he “et” her up, body and bones. Nobody would ever know what became of her. She remembered a horrible tale Lazarre had told her of a dog that flew at some one’s throat and tore out the “juggler” vein. Suppose he tore out her “juggler” vein.
She said her prayers that morning very earnestly. And in spite of her terror she did not forget to put on her green dress, though she didn’t like it, because it was its turn and mustn’t feel neglected. She tried to eat some breakfast. She went out to the road, that had suddenly stretched to miles and miles, all filled with terror for her, with her lunch-basket and her little quaking heart.
“You’re not frightened to go alone, darling?” said Mother, kissing her good-bye.
“Oh, no,” lied Marigold gallantly. Mother must not know — must not even suspect.
“And I won’t — I won’t be frightened,” she whispered defiantly to the world. “I’ll make it true. I’m sure God will not let The Dog be there. I’m quite sure.”
“Cheer up,” said Lucifer on the gate post, blinking his topaz eyes at her. “A dog is only a dog. Bristle up your tail and spit at him. Any one can bark through a fence.”
There was no delight in the road that day for Marigold, though the fir-trees blew gaily together on the windy hill and Mr. Donkin’s calves stood in a ferny corner and looked at her with elfin mischief in their soft dark eyes. As she drew near Mr. Plaxton’s house she could see The Dog sitting on the steps. Marigold grew cold all over, but she came on. Old Grandmother, she was sure, would have gone on. The Dog rushed down to the gate and tore along the fence and barked. Most furiously. Did he know she was afraid of him? It seemed a year to Marigold before she left him behind. She felt rather sickish all day in school and couldn’t eat her lunch. And her spirit was bitter within her. God hadn’t answered her prayer. Very likely old Cousin Malcolm was right. Of course he was right. Marigold went home past The Dog in a godless world, where only Terror r
eigned supreme.
4
For a week Marigold lived in that world and tasted its horror to the full. But she would have died before she admitted her cowardice to Mother or Grandmother. She might have told it to Aunt Marigold, but Aunt Marigold was away. She could not play with Sylvia, and a new batch of kittens left her cold. And every day that Dog rushed down to the gate and pursued her beside the fence with Barks. Marigold saw everything connected with The Dog in capitals. Some day — Marigold knew it — he would jump the fence.
One rainy day she felt sure he would not be there, but he was. Noisier than ever.
“I wish you were dead,” Marigold whispered passionately. But she could not pray that he would die, though once she tried to. Even a dog has some rights, she felt. She still prayed — though she did not think it a bit of use.
And then one day The Dog did jump the fence.
5
“The child is getting frightfully thin and pale,” worried Mother. “She hardly eats any breakfast. I’m sure that long walk to school is too much for her.”
“I walked two and a half miles to school when I was her age,” said Grandmother, who was worried, too, but wouldn’t give in. “How is she to get to school if she doesn’t walk? She can’t be taken every day.”
“She has nightmares — something Marigold never had before,” persisted Mother. “Last night she screamed dreadfully that ‘it’ had caught her. And do you notice how little she laughs?”
“I notice she doesn’t go traipsing up the hill after Sylvia any more and that’s so much to the good,” said Grandmother in a tone of satisfaction. “I’ll tell her she mustn’t go tearing round with the children at school, tiring herself out. That’s what’s the matter with her.”
There was no need of such a command. Marigold was so quiet at school that the other children thought her stupid and the teacher thought her a model — though a little dull. She couldn’t seem to remember half she was told. How could she when she didn’t hear it, being wrapped up in dread of the walk home past The Dog? The terrible thing was that it wasn’t getting any easier — harder if anything. Marigold felt that she couldn’t go on being brave forever. Some day she would break down and confess everything, and everybody would know what a coward she was.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 460