Physically, Granny Phin was hardly every inch alive, for she could not walk alone, having, as she told her visitors later, “paralattics of the hips.” But, mentally, her strength had not abated. She was of striking appearance, with snow-white hair in elf-locks around her dead-white face and flashing greenish-blue eyes. She still possessed all her teeth, but they were discoloured and fang-like and when she drew back her lips in a smile she was certainly a rather wolf-like old dame. She wore a frilled widow’s cap tied tightly under her chin, a red calico blouse, and a voluminous skirt of red-and-black checked homespun, and was evidently addicted to bare feet. She liked to sit on the veranda, where she could scream maledictions and shake her long black stick at any persons or objects that incurred her dislike or displeasure. Marigold had heard of Granny Phin, but she had never expected to see her. Curiosity mingled with her trepidation as she followed the Weed Man up the path. What a difference there was in old women, she thought, comparing Old Grandmother and Grandmother to this crone.
“Well, this is a treat,” said Granny Phin.
“It’s a warm day, Mistress Phin,” said the Weed Man.
“Ye’ll be in a warmer place ere long, no doubt,” retorted Granny, “and I’ll sit in my high seat in heaven and laugh at yez. Hev ye forgot the last time ye was here that dog o’ yourn bit me?”
“Yes, and the poor liddle brute has been ill almost ever since,” said the Weed Man rather sternly. “He’s only just got well. Don’t let me see you letting him bite you again.”
“The devil himself can’t get the better of yer tongue,” chuckled Granny admiringly. “Well, come up, come up. Lucky for you I’m in a good humour to-day. I’ve had such fun watching old Doc Ramsay’s funeral go past. Ten years ago to-day he told me I’d only a year to live. Interduce yer family, please.”
“Miss Marigold Lesley of Cloud of Spruce — Miss Gwennie Lesley of Rush Hill.”
“Cloud o’ Spruce folk, eh? I worked at Cloud o’ Spruce in my young days. The old lady was a bigotty one. Yer Aunt Adela was there that summer. She looked like an angel, but they do be saying she p’isened her man.”
“She isn’t our Aunt Adela. She’s only a third cousin,” said Gwen. “And she didn’t poison her husband.”
“Well, well, take it easy. Half the husbands in the world ought to be p’isened, anyhow. I had four so I ought to know something of the breed. Sit down all of yez on the floor of the veranda and let yer feet hang down, till dinner’s ready. That’s what ye’ve come for, I reckon. Lily — Lily.”
In response to Granny’s yells a tall, thin, slatternly woman with a sullen face showed herself for a moment in the doorway.
“Company for dinner, Lily — quality folks from Cloud o’ Spruce. Put on a tablecloth and bring out the frog pie. And mind ye brew some skeewiddle tea. And send T. B. out to talk to the girls.”
“Lily’s peeved to-day,” grinned Granny as Lily disappeared without a word. “I boxed her ears this morning ‘cause she left the soap in the water.”
“And her past sixty. Come, come,” protested the Weed Man.
“I believe ye. Ye’d think she could have larned sense in sixty years,” said Granny, choosing to misunderstand him. “But some folks never larn sense. Yerself now — ye was a young fool once and now ye’re an old one. Sad that. T. B., come here and entertain the young ladies.”
T. B. came rather sulkily and squatted down by Gwennie. He was a shock-headed urchin with his grandmother’s wicked green eyes. Marigold took little notice of him. She was absorbed in awful visions of frog pie. And what was skeewiddle tea? It sounded worse than frog pie because she hadn’t the least idea what it was. But Gwennie, who had a flair for all kinds of boys, was soon quite at home, bandying slang with Timothy Benjamin Phin — T. B. for short. T. B. soon learned that there were “no flies on her,” even if she were one of those “bigotty Lesleys,” and also no great need to be overfussy as to what he said. When a plain “damn” slipped out Gwen only giggled.
“Oh, T. B., aren’t you afraid you’ll go to the bad place if you say such words?”
“Nix on that,” contemptuously. “I don’t believe there’s any heaven or hell. When you die there’s an end of you.”
“Wouldn’t you like to go on living?”
“Nope. There’s no fun in it,” said the youthful misanthrope. “And heaven’s a dull place from all the accounts I’ve heard.”
“You’ve never been there or you wouldn’t call it dull,” said Marigold suddenly.
“Have you been there?”
Marigold thought of the Hidden Land and the spruce hill and Sylvia.
“Yes,” she said.
T. B. looked at her. This Marigold-girl was not as pretty as the Gwen one and there wasn’t as much “go” in her; but there was something that made T. B. rather cautious, so instead of saying what he would have said to Gwen, he merely remarked politely,
“You’re lying.”
“Mind yer manners,” Granny suddenly shot at T. B. from her conversation with the Weed Man. “Don’t ye let me catch ye calling ladies liars.”
“Oh, give your face a rest,” retorted T. B.
“No shrimp sauce if ye please,” said Granny.
T. B. shrugged his shoulders and turned to Gwen.
“She was picking on Aunt Lily all day ‘cause Aunt Lily left the soap in the wash-pan. She used to smack her, but I stopped that. I wasn’t going to have Granny abuse Aunt Lily.”
“How did you stop her?” queried Gwen.
“The last time she smacked Aunt Lily I went up to her and bit her,” said T. B. coolly.
“You ought to bite her oftener, if that will stop her,” giggled Gwen.
“There ain’t nothing else worth standing up to her for,” grinned T. B. “Granny’s tough biting. No, I let her alone and she lets me alone — mostly. She gave me a jaw last week when I got drunk.”
“Apple-sauce. You never,” scoffed Gwen.
T. B. had — as a sort of experiment, it appeared.
“Jest wanted to see what it was like. And it was awful disappointing. I jest went to sleep. Could do that without getting drunk. No fear of my getting jagged again. No kick in it. Nothing is ever like what you expect it to be in this world. It’s a dull old hole.”
“’Tisn’t,” interjected Granny again. “It’s an int’resting world. Vi’lent int’resting.”
Marigold felt there was one thing she had in common with Granny at least. In a sense Marigold was enjoying herself. All this was a glimpse into a kind of life she had never known existed, but it was int’resting—”vi’lent int’resting,” as Granny said.
Granny and the Weed Man appeared to be enjoying themselves, too, in spite of an occasional passage-at-arms.
“Going to the Baptist church, are yez?” snarled Granny. “Well, if ye do yer dog’ll go to heaven afore ye do. Catch me going to a Baptist church. I’m a Episcopalian — always was and always will be, world without end, amen.”
“I don’t believe you ever saw the inside of an Episcopalian church in your life,” taunted the Weed Man.
“Yah, I’d tweak yer nose for that if I could reach it,” retorted Granny. “Go to yer Baptist church — go to yer Baptist church. Ye son of a monkey-faced rabbit. And I’ll sit here and imagine yez all being fried.”
She suddenly turned to Marigold.
“If this Weed Man was as rich as he’s poor he’d be riding over the heads of all of us. I tell you the real pride of this man is ridic’lous.”
“Dinner’s ready,” Aunt Lily called sulkily from inside.
“Come and help me in,” said Granny, reaching briskly for her black stick. “All that keeps me alive is the little bit I eat.”
Before the Weed Man could go gallantly to her assistance a shining new car, filled with gaily dressed people, suddenly swung in at the gate and stopped in front of the veranda. The driver bent from the car to make some request, but Granny, crouched like an old tigress, did not allow him to utter a word. She caught up the ne
arest missile — which happened to be a plate filled with gravy and bacon scraps — from the bench beside her and hurled it at him. It missed his face by a hair’s breadth and landed squarely, gravy and all, in a fashionable lady’s silken lap. Granny Phin followed this up by a series of fearsome yells and maledictions of which the mildest were, “May all yer pittaties be rotten” and “May ye always be looking for something and never finding it” and — finally, “May ye all have the seven-year itch. I’ll pray for it, that I will.”
The half-dazed driver backed his car out of the gate and broke all speed-limits down the road. Gwen was squealing with delight, the Weed Man was grinning and Marigold was trying hard to feel shocked.
Granny was in high good humour.
“My, but that did me good. I kin hold up my end of a row yit. Ye could tell by the look of that fellow his grandfather hanged himself in the horse-stable. Come to dinner, all of yez. If we’d known ye were comin’ we’d a killed the old rooster. It’s time he was used anyway. But there’s always frog pie, hey? Now for the frog pie.”
To Marigold’s relief and Gwen’s disappointment there was no frog pie. Indeed, there wasn’t much of anything but fried ham and potatoes with some blueberry jam — which suggested rather dismal recollections to Marigold. The dinner was a dull affair, for Aunt Lily was still sulky, Granny was busy gobbling and the Weed Man was silent. It was one of his peculiarities that he seldom talked inside any house.
“Can’t think or talk right with walls round me — never could,” he had told Salome once.
After dinner the Weed Man paid for their meal with a bottle of liniment for Granny’s “paralattics,” and Granny bade them a friendly good-bye.
“It’s sorry I am that ye’re goin’ instead o’ comin’,” she said graciously.
She pulled Marigold so close to her that Marigold had a horrible idea that Granny Phin was going to kiss her. If that happened Marigold knew she would never be the same girl again. But Granny only whispered,
“She’s a bit purtier than you, but I like you best — ye look like a bit o’ spring.”
Which was a nicer compliment than one would have expected old Granny Phin to pay.
4
Their afternoon drive led along the winding shore of a little river running into the Head of the Bay. Far down was the blue, beckoning harbour and beyond it the sunny dunes and the misty gulf. The Weed Man shook his whip at it mournfully.
“One poetry has vanished from the gulf forever,” he said, more to himself than to the girls. “When I was a boy that gulf there would be dotted with white sails on a day like this. Now there’s nothing but gasoline boats and they’re not on speaking terms with romance at all. Romance is vanishing — romance is vanishing out of our world.”
He shook his head gloomily. But Marigold, looking on the world with the eyes of youth, saw romance everywhere. As for Gwennie she was not concerned with romance or the lack of it but only with her stomach.
“Gee, I’m hungry,” she said. “I didn’t get half enough at the Phins’s. Where’ll we have supper?”
“Down at my place,” said the Weed Man. “We’re going there now. Tabby’ll have a bite for us. After supper I’ll take you home — if the weather keeps good-humoured. Those weather-gaws aren’t out for nothing. It’ll rain cats and dogs to-morrow.”
Marigold wondered what weather-gaws were — and then forgot in thinking how interesting it would be if it really rained cats and dogs. Little silk-eared kittens everywhere by the basketful — loads of darling pudgy puppies.
The Weed Man’s “place” was at the end of a wood road far down by the red harbour shore. He did not like to have his fellow-mortals too close to him. The little white-washed house seemed to be cuddled down among shrubs and blossoms. There were trees everywhere — the Weed Man would never have any cut down — and four blinking, topaz-eyed kittens in a row on the window-sill, all looking as if they had been cut out of black velvet by the same pattern.
“Cloud o’ Spruce breed,” said the Weed Man as he lifted the girls down, “Your Old Grandmother gave me the great-grandmother of them. You are very welcome to my poor house, young ladies. Here, Tabby, we’ve company for supper. Bring along a glass o’ water apiece.”
“Goodness, aren’t we going to have anything for supper but a glass of water?” whispered Gwen.
But Marigold was taken up with Tabby Derusha, about whom she had heard her elders talking. She was not, so Salome said, “all there.” She was reported to go Abel one better in the matter of heresy, for she didn’t believe in God at all. She laughed a great deal and seldom went from home.
Tabby was very stout and wore a dress of bright red-and-white striped material. Her face was round and blank but her red hair was abundant and beautiful, and she had her brother’s kind, childlike blue eyes. She laughed pleasantly at the girls as she brought them the water.
“Down with it — every drop,” ordered the Weed Man. “Every one who comes into my house has to drink a full glass of water first thing. People never drink half enough water. If they did they wouldn’t have to pay as many doctors’ bills. Drink, I say.”
Marigold was not in the least thirsty and she found the second half of the generous tumbler hard to “down.” Gwennie drank half of hers.
“Finish,” said the Weed Man sternly.
“There, then,” said Gwennie, and threw the rest of her water in the Weed Man’s face.
“Oh, Gwennie!” cried Marigold reproachfully. Miss Tabby laughed. The Weed Man stood quite still, looking comical enough with the water dripping from his whiskers.
“That’ll save me washing my face,” he said — and it was all he did say.
“How does Gwennie do such things and get away with it?” wondered Marigold. “Is it because she’s so pretty?”
She was ashamed of Gwennie’s manners. Perhaps Gwen was a little ashamed of herself — if shame were possible to her — for she behaved beautifully at the table — making only one break, when she asked Tabby curiously if it were true she didn’t believe in God.
“As long as I can laugh at things I can get along without God,” said Tabby mysteriously. “When I can’t laugh I’ll have to believe in Him.”
They had a good supper with plenty of Tabby’s applecake and cinnamon-buns and raisin-bread and the Weed Man’s stories in between. But when he came in after supper and said the rain was very near and they must wait till morning to go home, it was not so very pleasant.
“Oh, we must go home,” cried Marigold. “Please, please take us home, Mr. Derusha.”
“I can’t drive you home and then drive back fourteen miles in a rainstorm. I am content with my allotted portion but I am poor — I can’t afford a buggy. And my umbrella’s full of holes. You’re all right here. Your folks know where you are and won’t worry. They know we’re clean. Your Grandmother was rained in here one night herself seven years ago. You go right to bed and sleep, and morning’ll be here ‘fore you know it.”
5
“I know I won’t sleep a wink in this horrid place,” said Gwen snappily, looking scornfully around the tiny bedroom and seeing only the bare uneven floor with its round, braided rug, the cheap little bureau with its cracked mirror, the chipped pitcher and bowl, the stained and cracked ceiling, the old-fashioned knitted lace that trimmed the pillow slips. Marigold saw these things, too, but she saw something else — the view of the harbour through the little window, splendid in the savage sunset of approaching storm. Marigold was tired and rather inclined to think that doing everything you wanted wasn’t such fun after all; but under the spell of an outlook like that, the sense of romance and adventure persisted. Why couldn’t Gwen make the best of things? She had been grumbling ever since supper. She wasn’t such a sport after all.
“If the wind changes, your face will always look like that.”
“Oh, don’t try to be smart,” snapped Gwen. “Old Abel should have taken us home. He promised to. I’m scared to death to sleep in the same house with Tabby De
rusha. Any one can see she’s cracked. She might come in and smother us with a pillow.”
Marigold was a little frightened of Tabby herself — now that it was dark. But all she said was,
“I do hope Salome won’t forget to give the cats their strippings.”
“I do hope there aren’t any bed-bugs in this bed,” said Gwen, looking at it with disfavour. “It looks like it.”
“Oh, no, I’m sure there isn’t. Everything is so clean,” said Marigold. “Let’s just say our prayer and get into bed.”
“I wonder you aren’t afraid to say your prayers after that lie you told T. B. to-day about having been in Heaven,” said Gwen — who was tired and out of sorts and determined to wreak it on somebody.
“It wasn’t a lie — it wasn’t — oh, you don’t understand,” cried Marigold. “It was Sylvia—”
She stopped short. She had never told Gwennie about Sylvia. Gwen had somehow got an inkling that Marigold had some secret connected with the spruce wood and teased her to tell it at intervals. She pounced on Marigold’s inadvertent sentence.
“Sylvia! You’ve some secret about Sylvia, whoever she is. You’re mean and dirty not to tell me. Friends always tell each other secrets.”
“Not some kinds of secrets. I’m not going to tell you about Sylvia, and you needn’t coax. I guess I have a right to my own secrets.”
Gwen threw one of her boots at the wall.
“All right then. Keep it to yourself. Do you think I want to know your horrid secrets? I do know one of them, anyhow. You’re jealous of Clementine Lawrence.”
Marigold coloured hotly. How on earth had Gwennie found that out? She had never mentioned Clementine to her.
“Oh-h-h!” Gwennie chuckled maliciously. She had to torment somebody as an outlet to her nerves, and Marigold was the only one handy. “You didn’t think I knew that. You can’t hide things from me. Gee, how sour you looked when I praised her picture! Fancy being jealous of a dead woman you never saw! It is the funniest thing I ever heard of.”
Marigold writhed. The worst of it was it was true. She seemed to hate Clementine more bitterly every day of her life. She wished she could stop it. It was a torture when she thought of it. And it was torture to think that Gwennie had stumbled on it.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 468