Jack kept quiet for awhile, being fully occupied with gorging. But just as it had dawned on Marigold that the supper was almost over and had gone very well, Jack said,
“Say, Marigold, you can cook. If you’ll promise to have my slippers warm for me every night when I come home, I’ll come back and marry you when I grow up.”
“I wouldn’t marry you—”
“Oh, come, come now, my duck,” said Jack, with an irritating snigger, “wait till you’re asked.”
“So you were courting in the pantry,” chuckled Cousin Marcus.
Jack grinned like a Chessy cat.
“Marigold has such a nice little way of cuddling in your arms, Dad.”
He hadn’t really meant to say it, but it suddenly struck him as a very clever thing to say.
Marigold positively came out in goose-flesh.
“I haven’t — I mean — you couldn’t know it if I had.”
“You’re beginning young,” said Cousin Marcus solemnly, pretending to shake his head over the doings of modern youth.
Marigold had a stroke of diabolical inspiration.
“Johnsy is telling his dreams,” she said coolly.
That “Johnsy” was what Jack would have called “a mean wallop.” He dared not open his mouth again at the table and did not recover his impudence until they were leaving.
“Isn’t that a lovely moon?” said Marigold softly, more to herself than to any one, as she stood by the car.
“You should see the moons we have in Los Angeles,” he boasted.
“What do you really think of him?” said Uncle Marcus in a pig’s whisper, giving Marigold a poke in the ribs.
Marigold remembered that Salome had once said that Rose John had once said that if there was one thing more than another that lent spice to life, it was tormenting the men.
“I think Johnsy isn’t really half as big a fool as he looks,” she said condescendingly.
Cousin Marcus roared with laughter. “You’ve said a mouthful!” he exclaimed. Jack was crimson with rage. The car rolled away and Marigold stood by the gate, victress.
“I don’t know how it is some girls like boys,” she said.
4
When Grandmother and Mother came home — slightly annoyed, though they did not know it, that Great-Uncle William Lesley had been so inconsiderate as not to have died after all the bother but had rallied surprisingly — they had already heard the news, having met Cousin Marcus’s car on the road.
“Marigold, did you make the cake? Cousin Marcella said she wanted the recipe of our cake.”
“Yes,” said Marigold.
Grandmother sighed with relief.
“Thank goodness. When I heard there was cake I thought you must have borrowed it from Mrs. Donkin — like Rose John. You didn’t forget to put the pickles on.”
“No. I put pickles and chow both.”
“And you didn’t — you’re sure you didn’t — slop any tea over in the saucers.”
“I’m sure.”
Mother hugged Marigold in the blue room upstairs.
“Darling, you’re a brick! Grandmother and I felt dreadful until we found out there was cake.”
CHAPTER XVIII
Red Ink or — ?
1
Marigold thought the world a charming place at all times but especially in September, when the hills were blue and the great wheat-fields along the harbour-shore warm gold and the glens of autumn full of shimmering leaves. Marigold always felt that there was something in the fall that belonged to her and her alone if she could only find it, and this secret quest made of September and October months of magic.
To be sure there was generally school in September. But not this September for Marigold. She had not been quite herself through the August heat, so Mother and Grandmother and Aunt Marigold, who remembered that she was an M.D. in her own right when Uncle Klon let her remember it, advised that she be kept out of school for some weeks longer.
Then Aunt Irene Winthrop wrote to Mother and asked her to let Marigold visit her and Uncle Maurice. Aunt Irene was Mother’s sister, and the Winthrops and the Lesleys were none too fond of each other. Grandmother rather grimly said she thought Marigold would be just as well at home.
“We let her visit Aunt Anne last year,” said Mother. “I suppose Irene thinks it is her turn now.”
Mother was too timid — or too good a diplomat — to say that she thought Marigold should visit her mother’s people as well as her father’s. But Grandmother understood it that way and offered no further objection. So Marigold went to Uncle Maurice and Aunt Irene at Owl’s Hill. A name that fascinated Marigold. Any name with a hill in it was beautiful and Owl’s Hill was magical.
Uncle Maurice and Aunt Irene were secretly a little afraid that Marigold might be lonesome and homesick. But Marigold never thought of such a thing. She liked Owl’s Hill tremendously. Such a romantic spot on a high sloping hill with a little tree-smothered village snuggling at its foot and above it woods where at night sounded laughter that was merry but not human, while other hills lay beyond like green wave after wave. Uncle Maurice’s face was so red and beaming that Marigold felt he made fine weather out of the gloomiest day. And Aunt Irene was like Mother. Only she laughed more, not being a widow. And having no Grandmother living with her.
There was a long letter to be written every night to Mother, in which Marigold told her everything that happened during the day. She always went down the lane to put it in the mail-box herself every morning. And there was Amy Josephs, of the chubby, agreeable brown face, next door, to play with. Amy was the daughter of Uncle Maurice’s brother, so a cousin of sorts if you like. Amy made a fairly satisfactorily playmate who really seemed to have a dim conception of what Marigold meant when she talked of the laughter of bluebells and daisies, and they had good fun together.
Amy’s two village chums came up the hill to play with them. Marigold liked them fairly well also. Not one of the three was anything like as good a playmate as Sylvia but Marigold carefully concealed this thought because she was beginning to feel that it was a bit queer that she should like an imaginary playmate better than real ones. But there it was.
One of Amy’s chums was a very fat little girl with a most romantic name — June Page. A fair girl with hair so flaxen that beside it Marigold’s shone like spun gold. Caroline Chrysler was a missionary’s daughter. Sent home from India. Caroline, apart from her insistence on the fact that she was going to be a missionary, too — had been “consecrated to it in her cradle” — was quite a nice girl. It wasn’t her fault that she was dark and sallow — perhaps not her fault that she wouldn’t be called Carrie. Too frivolous for a consecrated. Marigold, who had once believed herself consecrated, too, could not be too hard on Caroline’s poses. So they all got on very well, each having her own private opinion of the others, and every new dawn that broke across the autumn upland, ushered in a day full of interest and delight.
Even Sundays. Marigold loved going down to church Sunday evenings with Aunt Irene and Amy. They always went down across the fields to the road. Aunt Irene always carried a little lantern because, though it was only crisp steel-blue twilight when they left, it was dark long before they reached the church. The lantern cast such fascinating shivery, giant shadows. They went along the edge of the sheep-pasture. Marigold loved the cool grass under her feet and the soft eerie sighs in the trees, the sweet wild odours of the wandering winds and the elfin laugh of the hidden brook down under the balsam-boughs. There was a smell of aftermath clover in the air and the Milky Way was overhead. All around were misty stars over the harvest-fields. One really felt too happy for Sunday.
Aunt Irene never talked much and Amy and Marigold talked in whispers.
“I wonder if Hip Price will be in church to-night,” said Amy.
“Who is Hip Price?” asked Marigold.
“He’s the minister’s son. His real name is Howard Ingraham Price, but he never gets anything but Hip — from his initials. He’s a
wfully clever. I never,” vowed Amy, speaking out of her tremendous experience of eleven and a half years, “met any one who knew so much. And he’s so brave. He saved a little girl from drowning once, at the risk of his life.”
“When?”
“Oh, before he came here. They only moved to this church last spring. He says he can lick his weight in wildcats. And he took the diploma for learning the whole Shorter Catechism by heart.”
Marigold felt rather bored with this prodigy.
“What does he look like?”
“He’s handsome. His eyes are just like an archangel’s,” said Amy fervently.
“How do you know? Did you ever see an archangel’s eyes?” demanded Marigold relentlessly.
2
The choir was singing Joy to the World, and Marigold was thinking of “Tidal, king of nations,” in the chapter the minister had just read. That phrase always fascinated her whenever she heard it. There was something so mysterious about it. Tidal, king of nations, was so much grander than just Tidal, king of one little country. Splendid. Triumphal. An entrancing figure of royalty ruling over hundreds of subject peoples. And just then Marigold saw Hip and thought no more forever of Tidal, king of nations.
He was sitting right across from her in the corner seat, staring at her. He continued to stare at her. Marigold felt that glance on her inescapably. She tried to look away — she fought against looking back — but in the end her eyes always returned to the corner seat to find his eyes still intent on her. Eyes can say so much in a second. Marigold felt very queer.
And, oh, he was handsome. Just like the slim princeling of fairy-tales. Brown curls shining in the lamplight. Cheeks rose-red under golden-tan. Dark-blue, romantic eyes. She felt that she would die of shame and humiliation when an old lady behind her suddenly held a peppermint out to her over the back of the seat. Marigold had to take it — and could not help looking at Hip as she did it. She could not — would not — did not eat it, but she felt as if Hip must see it all the time, moist and sticky in her warm, unwilling hand, and despise her for a baby who had to be kept good in church with peppermints. Marigold, to her dying day, never quite forgave Aunt Lucy Bates, who thought she had done a kind act to Lorraine Winthrop’s little girl.
Marigold found her legs were trembling when she got up for the last hymn. Her face was burning under Hip’s seemingly mesmerised eyes. She was sure every living soul in the church must notice him.
One at least had. Marigold met Caroline on the porch, going out, and it seemed to her that Caroline was a bit cool.
“Did you see Hip Price?” asked Caroline.
“Hip Price?” Marigold was not without the feminine knack of protective coloration. “Who is he?”
“That boy in the corner seat. I saw him staring at you. He always stares like that at a new girl.”
“Sly thing,” thought Marigold — not meaning Hip.
Amy did not go back with them. She was staying all night with June. So Marigold walked home alone with Aunt Irene. Not altogether alone.
On the other side of the road, until they reached the pasture gate, stalked a slender figure with a smart cap worn a bit rakishly on the back of its head. The figure whistled The Long, Long Trail. Marigold knew that it was Hip Price and she also knew that the manse was away on the other side of the church. It is terrific what damsels of eleven do know sometimes. But she was — almost — glad when they left the road and started up over the fields.
As they walked along Marigold was not thinking of the charm of starlit evening or the wind in the trees or the pixy lantern-shadows. I shall not tell you what she was thinking of. I will only state that next day she scorched a panful of cookies she had been left to watch because she was thinking of the same thing. Aunt Irene was annoyed. A Cloud of Spruce Lesley was supposed never to be careless. But Marigold with shining eyes and a dreamy smile lingering on her lips, did not worry about the cookies at all.
3
During the following three weeks life was a thing of rainbows for our Marigold. She had a delightful secret — a secret that nobody knew. Even when she wrote “everything” to Mother she did not tell her about Hip Price. Though she put an extra row of kisses in to make up for it.
The morning after that memorable Sunday evening, when Marigold went down to the end of the lane to mail Mother’s letter, she found a letter in the box addressed to herself. Marigold trembled again — a delicious trembling. She sat down among the goldenrod under a friendly little spruce-tree and read it. It was a very wonderful epistle. Ask Marigold. To be told she was beautiful! Once in awhile she had heard a hint that she was pretty. But beautiful! And what did it matter that he spelled “angel” angle? Angel really was a very tricky word. Anybody might spell it wrong. Besides, doesn’t everybody know that it doesn’t make a mite of difference how a love-letter is spelled? He signed himself “fondestly yours” with lots of flourishes and curlicues. And there was a little x for a P. S.
Marigold’s cheeks were so rosy when she went back to the house that Aunt Irene thought the child was picking up wonderfully. Marigold slept that night with Hip’s letter under her pillow. And found another in the mailbox the next morning! In which he asked her if she were going to June Page’s party Thursday evening and would she wear the blue dress she had worn to church? Would she? She had been wondering which of her two “good” dresses became her most and had been dangerously near selecting the green. And he wrote, “When the moon rises to-night think of me and I’ll think of you.” Marigold hunted out the time of moonrise in the almanac. Really, the moons of Owl’s Hill were wonderful. Cloud of Spruce never had such moons. And would any other boy she knew ever think of saying a thing like that? Not in a thousand years.
Hip cornered her off at the party and asked her why she hadn’t answered his letters. Marigold didn’t think she could without Aunt Irene knowing.
“But you don’t mind my writing them?” asked Hip softly — tenderly. Looking at her as if his very life depended on her answer. Marigold, dyed in blushes, confessed she didn’t. Whereupon Hip surveyed the room with the air of a conqueror. When called upon to recite he gave “Casabianca” in ringing tones, standing all beautiful and brave as the immortal hero. A horrible thought suddenly arose in Marigold’s mind. Did he know he was all beautiful and brave. She strangled and buried the hateful intruder instantly.
Hip was certainly captivating. He said such smart up-to-date things like “attaboy” and “apple-sauce” and “I’ll tell the world!” — looking at Marigold to see if she admired his smartness. And he walked home with her — not exactly from the house. He joined her on the road, having dashed across lots. And at the gate of Owl’s Hill lane he took her hand and kissed it. Marigold had read of young knights doing that but that it should happen to her!
It was thrilling to hear of all the deeds of high emprise Hip had done. That he had once saved a little girl from being burned to death — Amy must have got it twisted — that he often climbed to the very top of telegraph-poles — that he had once stopped a team of runaway horses by his own unaided prowess — that he would, on occasion, really relish a fight with blood-maddened tigers. As for sea-serpents, take Hip’s word for it, they ate out of his hand.
“I don’t believe he’s done all the wonderful things he’s always talking about,” Amy said scornfully once.
Marigold knew what that meant. Just sheer jealousy. And of course it was also jealousy that led Caroline to say that Hip had bitten his sister when he was four years old and left open old Mr. Simon’s gate on purpose so that the pigs could get into the garden. Marigold did not believe a word of it.
She had such a funny feeling when other people pronounced his name. It was thrilling to go to church and listen to Mr. Price preaching. His father. Marigold hated old Tom Ainsworth for sleeping in church. And there was one almost painfully rapturous day when she and Amy were invited to the manse to tea. To eat a meal at the same table with Hip was something in the nature of a rite, with the big maple rustlin
g outside the window on which, Hip told her, he had cut their intertwined initials. How bitterly she resented it when his mother told him to keep his elbow off the table and not talk with his mouth full!
And every morning that romantic journey to the mailbox to find a letter — a delightful letter. There were times when Marigold felt, though she would not admit it even to herself, that she really liked Hip’s letters much better than Hip himself.
In one he told her she was his Little Queen. And he had written that especial sentence in red ink — or — was it? — could it be — Marigold had heard of such things. She pitied every other girl, especially the consecrated Caroline, and thought of Hip every time the moon rose or didn’t rise.
“You are so different from everybody else,” Hip told her. Clever Hip.
4
The course of true love even at eleven never runs smooth. There came a dreadful day when she and Hip almost quarrelled. Marigold had been told a certain shameful little secret by Netta Caroll about Em Dawes. Em Dawes was living with an aunt down in the village because her father and mother were divorced, true’s you live. Netta had heard it over in Halifax and cross your heart you were never to tell a word of it. Marigold promised solemnly she would never tell. And then Hip, with his uncanny nose for secrets, discovered that Marigold had one and coaxed her to tell him.
Marigold wanted to tell him — yearned to tell him — felt her heart must really break if she didn’t tell him. But there was her solemn promise. Lesleys did not break their solemn promises. It was a custom of their caste. Hip grew angry when he found her so unexpectedly unmalleable, and when anger gave him nothing — except perhaps the look in Marigold’s face — he became sad and reproachful. She didn’t like him a bit, of course, when she wouldn’t tell him what she and Netta had been whispering about that time.
“If you don’t tell me,” said Hip earnestly, “I’ll go and drown myself. When you see me lying dead you’ll wish you’d told me.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 476