In the rose and purple twilight they went away. Marigold lay and listened to the cars snorting and the sleighbells jingling and then to a tired little lonely motherless wind sobbing itself to sleep in the vines — a wind that had made a fool of itself in the great family of Winds and daren’t lift its voice above a whisper.
To Marigold came some one who had never lost the knack of looking at the world through a child’s eyes.
“Oh, Aunty Marigold, I’ve dis-dis-graced myself and — all — the Lesleys,” sobbed Marigold.
“Oh, no, darling. There’s no disgrace in a little stage fright. We all have it. The first time I tried to recite in public my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth and I snivelled — yes, snivelled, and my father had to come up and carry me down from the platform. You got away on your own legs at least.”
Marigold could not stop crying all at once, but she sat up and blew her nose.
“Oh, Aunty Marigold — really?”
“Yes, really. Father said to me, ‘I am disappointed in you,’ and I said, ‘I wouldn’t care for that if I wasn’t disappointed in myself.’”
“That’s how I feel, too,” whispered Marigold. “And then Beulah—”
“Never mind the Beulahs. You’ll find heaps of them in life. The only thing to do is ignore them. Beulah would make an excellent mouse-trap, but if she tried for a hundred years she couldn’t look as sweet and pretty as you did, standing up there with your puzzled blue eyes. And when you screwed them shut—”
“Oh, I saw such funny things, Aunt Marigold,” cried Marigold, bursting into a peal of laughter. Aunt Marigold’s little bit of artful flattery was a pick-me-up. It was true poor Beulah was very plain. Oh, how nice to be with some one who just understood and loved. Nothing seemed so disgraceful any more. A truce to vain regrets. She’d show them another time. And here was Lucifer and Salome with a plate of hop-and-go-fetch-its.
“I saved ’em for you,” said Salome. “Uncle Peter’s Pete was bound to have them but I Peted him. He’ll not try to sneak into my pantry again in a hurry.”
“I suppose I can take off this absurd ribbon now,” said Lucifer, his very whiskers vibrating with indignation. “A dog doesn’t mind making an ass of himself, but a cat has his feelings.”
CHAPTER X
The Bobbing of Marigold
1
“Sylvia has bobbed her hair,” said Marigold rebelliously.
Grandmother sniffed, as Grandmother was apt to sniff at the mention of Sylvia — though since the day of Dr. Clows visit she had never referred to her, and the key of The Magic Door was always in the lock. But she only said,
“Well, you’re not going to have yours bobbed, so you can make up your small mind to that. In after years you will thank me for it.”
Marigold didn’t look or feel very thankful just then. Everybody had bobbed hair. Nancy and Beulah — who laughed at her long “tails” — and all the girls in school and even Mrs. Donkin’s scared-looking little “home girl” across the road. But she, Marigold Lesley of Cloud of Spruce, had to be hopelessly old-fashioned because Grandmother so decreed. Mother would have been willing for the bob, though she might cry in secret about it. Mother had always been so proud of Marigold’s silken fleece. But Grandmother! Marigold knew it was hopeless.
“I don’t know if we should do it,” said Grandmother — not alluding to bobbed hair. “She has never been left alone before. Suppose something should happen.”
“Nothing ever happens here,” said Marigold pessimistically and untruthfully. Things happened right along — int’resting things and beautiful things. But this was Marigold’s blue day. She could not go with Grandmother and Mother and Salome to Great-Aunt Jean’s golden wedding because Aunt Jean’s grandchildren had measles. Marigold did so want to see a golden wedding.
“You can get what you like for supper,” said Grandmother. “But remember you are not to touch the chocolate cake. That is for the missionary tea to-morrow. Nor cut any of my Killarney roses. I want them to decorate my table.”
“Have a good time, honey-child,” whispered Mother. “Why not ask Sylvia down to tea with you? There are doughnuts in the cellar crock and plenty of hop-and-go-fetch-its.”
But Marigold did not brighten to this. For the first time she felt a vague discontent with Sylvia, her fairy-playmate of three dream-years.
“I almost wish I had a real little girl to play with,” she said, as she stood at the gate, watching Grandmother and Mother and Salome drive off up the road — all packed tightly in the buggy. Poor Mother, as Marigold knew, had to sit on the narrow edge of nothing.
2
Perhaps this was a Magic Day. Perhaps the dark mind of the Witch of Endor, sitting on the gate post, brewed up some kind of spell. Who knows? At all events, when Marigold turned to look down the other road — the road that ran along the harbour shore to the big Summer Hotel by the dunes — there was the wished-for little girl standing by her very elbow and grinning at her.
Marigold stared in amazement. She had never seen the girl before or any one just like her. The stranger was about her own age — possibly a year older. With ivory outlines, a wide red mouth, long narrow green eyes and little dark eyebrows like wings. Bareheaded, with blue-black hair. Beautifully bobbed, as Marigold instantly perceived with a sigh. She wore an odd, smart green dress with touches of scarlet embroidery and she had wonderful slim white hands — very beautiful and very white. Marigold glanced involuntarily at her own sunburned little paws — and felt ashamed. But — the stranger had bare knees. Marigold had never seen this fashion before and she was as much horrified as Grandmother herself could have been.
Who could this girl be? She had appeared so suddenly, so uncannily. She looked different in every way from the Harmony little girls.
“Who are you?” she asked abruptly, before she realised that such a question was probably bad manners.
The stranger grinned.
“I’m me,” she said.
Marigold turned haughtily away. A Lesley of Cloud of Spruce was not going to be made fun of by any little nobody from nowhere.
But the girl in green whirled about on tip-toes till she was in front of Marigold once more.
“I’m Princess Varvara,” she said. “I’m staying at the hotel down there with Aunt Clara. My uncle is the Duke of Cavendish and Governor-General of Canada. He is visiting the Island and to-day they all went down to visit Cavendish, because it was called after my uncle’s great-great-grandfather. All except Aunt Clara and me. She had a headache and they wouldn’t take me because there are measles in Cavendish. I was so mad I ran away. I wanted to give Aunt Clara the scare of her life. She’s mild and gentle as a kitten but, oh, such a darned tyrant. I can’t call my soul my own. So when she went to bed with her headache I just slipped off when Olga was waiting on her. I’m going to do as I like for one day, anyhow. I’m fed up with being looked after. What’s the matter?”
“You are telling me a lot of fibs,” said Marigold. “You are not a princess. There are no princesses in Prince Edward Island. And you wouldn’t be dressed like that if you were a princess.”
Varvara laughed. There was some trick about her laugh. It made you want to laugh too. Marigold had hard work to keep from laughing. But she wouldn’t laugh. You couldn’t laugh when anybody was trying to deceive you with such yarns.
“She must be one of the Americans down at the hotel,” thought Marigold. “And she thinks it fun to fool a silly little down-easter like me if she can. But she can’t! Imagine a princess having bare knees! Just like Lazarre’s kids.”
“How do you think a princess should be dressed?” demanded Varvara. “In a crown and a velvet robe. You’re silly. I am a Princess. My father was a Russian Prince and he was killed in The Terror. Mother is English. A sister of the Duke’s. We live in England now, but I came out to Canada with Aunt Clara to visit Uncle.”
“I’m not a bad hand at making up things myself,” said Marigold. She had an impulse to tell this girl all about
Sylvia.
Varvara shrugged her shoulders.
“All right. You needn’t believe me if you don’t want to. All I want is somebody to play with. You’ll do nicely. What is your name?”
“Marigold Lesley.”
“How old are you?”
“Ten. How old are you?” Marigold was determined that the questions should not be all on one side.
“Oh, I’m just the right age. Come, ask me in. I want to see where you live. Will your mother let us play together?”
“Mother and Grandmother have gone to Aunt Jean’s golden wedding,” explained Marigold. “And Salome was invited, too, because her mother was a friend of Aunt Jean’s. So I’m all alone.”
The stranger suddenly threw her arms about Marigold and kissed her rapturously on both cheeks.
“How splendid. Let’s have a good time. Let’s be as bad as we like. Do you know I love you. You are so pretty. Prettier than I am — and I’m the prettiest princess of my age in Europe.”
Marigold was shocked. Little girls shouldn’t say things like that. Even if you thought them — sometimes, when you had your blue dress on — you shouldn’t say them. But Varvara was talking on.
“That sleek, parted gold hair makes you look like a saint in a stained glass window. But why don’t you have it bobbed?”
“Grandmother won’t let me.”
“Cut it off in spite of her.”
“You don’t know Grandmother,” said Marigold.
She couldn’t decide whether she really liked this laughing, tantalising creature or not. But she was int’resting — oh, yes, she was int’resting. Something had happened with a vengeance. Would she tell her about Sylvia? And take her up the hill? No, not yet — somehow, not yet. There was the nice little playhouse in the currant-bushes first.
“What a darling spot,” cried Varvara. “But how do you play here all by yourself?”
“I pretend I am the Lady Gloriana Fitzgerald, and sit in the parlour and tell my servant what to do.”
“Oh, let me be the servant. I think it must be such fun. Now, you tell me what to do. Shall I sweep the floor?”
Marigold had no trouble telling Varvara what to do. She would show this young Yankee, who thought her soft enough to believe any old yarn, just what it was to be Marigold Lesley of Cloud of Spruce.
3
They had a very good time for a while. When they got tired of it they went to see the pigs — Varvara thought them “very droll animals” — and then they went picking raspberries in the bush behind the pig-house. Varvara kept telling wonderful stories. Certainly, thought Marigold, she was a crackerjack at making up. But they suddenly found all their clothes filled with stick-tights, which was decidedly unpleasant.
“What would you think if I said ‘damn’?” demanded Varvara explosively.
Marigold didn’t say what she would think, but her face said it for her.
“Well, I won’t,” said Varvara. “I’ll just say ‘lamb’ in the same tone and that will relieve my feelings just the same. What berries are those? Eat some and if they don’t kill you I’ll take some, too. You know there is a kind of berry — if you eat them you can see fairies and talk to them. I’ve been looking for them all my life.”
“Well, these aren’t fairy-berries. They are poisonous,” said Marigold. “I did eat some once and they made me awful sick. The minister prayed for me in church,” she concluded importantly.
“When I was sick the Archbishop of Canterbury prayed for me,” said Varvara.
Marigold wished she had made her minister the moderator of the General Assembly at least.
“Let’s go and sit on that seat in the orchard and pick these things out of our clothes,” suggested Varvara. “And play ‘I see’ while we do it. The game is which will see the most wonderful things. I see a china cat with diamond whiskers walking over the lawn.”
“I see a bear with wings,” said Marigold, who felt she could see things quite as marvellous as any girl from the States trying to pass herself off as a princess.
“I see five angels sitting in that apple-tree.”
“I see three little grey monkeys on a twisted bough with four moons rising behind them.”
Varvara drew her black brows together in a scowl. She didn’t like being outseen.
“I see the devil squatting over there in your garden, with his tail curled up over his back.”
Marigold was annoyed. She felt that she couldn’t see anything more amazing than that.
“You don’t!” she cried. “That — that person never comes into our garden.”
Varvara laughed scornfully.
“It’d be a more interesting place if he did. Do you know” — confidentially—”I pray for the devil every night.”
“Pray for him! For him!”
“Yes. I’m so sorry for him. Because he wasn’t always a devil you know. If he had been I suppose he wouldn’t mind it so much. There must be spells when he feels awfully homesick, wishing he could be an angel again. Well, we’ve got all the stick-tights out. What will we do now?”
Again Marigold thought of introducing her to Sylvia. And again for some occult reason she postponed it.
“Let’s go and fire potato-balls. Its great fun.”
“I don’t know how to fire potato-balls. What are they?”
“I’ll show you — little tiny things like small green apples. You stick one on the point of a long switch — and whirl it — so — and the potato ball flies through the air for miles. I hit Lazarre in the face with one last night. My, but he was mad.”
“Who is Lazarre?”
“Our French hired boy.”
“How many servants have you got?”
“Just Lazarre. Salome isn’t really a servant. She is related to us.”
“We had fifty before The Terror,” said Varvara. “And eight gardeners. Our grounds were a dream. I can just barely remember them. Uncle’s are wonderful, too. But I like your little garden, and that house of currant-bushes. Isn’t it fun to sit and eat currants off your own walls? Well, where are your potato-balls?”
“Over there in Mr. Donkin’s field. We must go up the orchard and along by the fence and—”
“Why not cut straight across?” asked Varvara, waving her hand at Mr. Donkin’s creamy green oats.
“There’s no path there,” said Marigold.
“We’ll make a path,” said Varvara — and made it. Right through the oats. Marigold followed her, though she knew she shouldn’t, praying that Mr. Donkin wouldn’t see them.
Varvara thought firing potato-balls the best sport ever. In her excitement she fell half-a-dozen times over potato-plants and got her dress in a fearful state in the wet clay a morning shower had left. And the potato-ball juice stained her face and hands till she looked more like a beggar-maid than a princess.
“I never was real dirty in my life before. It’s nice,” she said complacently.
4
Varvara insisted on helping Marigold to get supper, though Marigold would have preferred being alone. Company did not help to get supper at Cloud of Spruce. But Varvara was out to do as she liked and she did it. She helped set the table, remarking,
“That cup is just like one Aunt Clara used to have. Her husband bit a piece out of it one day when he was in a tantrum.”
Marigold knew by this alone that Varvara was no princess. Princess’s uncles could never do things like that. Why, Phidime had done that once — bit a piece right out of his wife’s much prized cut-glass tumbler. The only one she had. A lady she had worked for had given it to her.
Varvara even went to the spare room with Marigold to get the fruit-cake. Marigold decided that for company she must cut some fruit-cake. Grandmother always did. And it was kept in a box under the spare room bed — the sleek, smooth terrible spare room bed where so many people had died. The fruit-cake had always been kept there, ever since Grandmother’s children were small and the spare room the only place they dared not go to look for it.
&nb
sp; “Oh!” squealed Varvara. “Is that a feather bed? A real feather bed?”
“Yes.”
Varvara took one wild leap and landed squarely in the middle of it, bounding up and down in ecstasy right on Grandmother’s famous spread of filet crochet.
“I’ve always wanted to see what a feather bed was like. I didn’t think there were any left in the world.”
Marigold was horrified. That sacred spare room bed! What would Grandmother say.
“Every dead person in our family except Old Grandmother has died in that bed,” she said.
Varvara turned pale and hastily slid off the bed.
“Why didn’t you tell me that before I jumped on it, you little whelp?” she cried excitedly.
“I’m not a little whelp,” said Marigold.
“Of course you’re not.” There was another wild hug and kiss. Marigold emerged from it somewhat discomposed. The Lesleys were not so emotional.
But when Varvara saw the chocolate cake in the pantry, she must have that for supper. She must.
“We can’t,” said Marigold. “Grandmother said I wasn’t to touch it.”
Varvara stamped her feet.
“I don’t care what your grandmother said. I will have it. I’m keen on chocolate cake. And they never let me have more than two tiny pieces. Just put that cake right on the table. At once.”
“We are not going to have that cake,” said Marigold. There was no one by to see it, but at that instant she looked like a pocket-edition of Grandmother. “There is the fruitcake and the date loaf and the hop-and-go-fetch-its.”
“I don’t want your hop-and-go-what-do-you-call-’ems. Once and for all, are we going to have this cake?”
“Once and for all we’re not.”
Varvara clenched her hands.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 464