Hip rather overreached himself there, because Marigold didn’t believe at all that there was the slightest fear of his drowning himself. She stuck gallantly to her determination not to tell, despite his pleadings. And then the next afternoon, when it became known that Hip Price had disappeared and could not be found anywhere, though everybody in the community was madly searching for him, Marigold thought she must die. Had Hip actually drowned himself because he thought she did not like him? Had he? The dread was intolerable. How terrible to live all your life remembering that some one had drowned himself because of you! Who could support such a prospect?
“I heard a dog howling under my window last night,” sobbed Amy. “Mother says that’s a sure sign of death.”
“That was only old Lazy Murphy’s dog. Surely you don’t think he knows anything,” protested Marigold. She was resentful of Amy’s crying. What right had Amy to cry about Hip? She, Marigold, could not cry. Her dread went too deep for tears.
“His mother believes he’s kidnapped,” said Amy, hunting for a dry spot in her handkerchief. “She’s just been going from one fainting fit to another all day. But some say he was seen going down the river in that leaky old boat of Shanty George’s. Certain death, Shanty George says it was. Oh, I won’t sleep a wink to-night.”
Then came Caroline and June, and Caroline and June were also in tears — which did not improve the looks of either of them. Or their tempers, evidently. Caroline was shrewish.
“I don’t see what you’re crying about, June Page. He wasn’t your minister’s son. You’re a Baptist.”
“I guess I’ve as good a right to cry as you,” retorted June. “Hip was my friend — my special friend. He thought more of me than of any girl in Owl’s Hill. He’s told me so dozens of times. He told me I was different from anybody he’d ever met. Cry! I will cry. Just you try to stop me.”
An unbecoming red flush had risen in Caroline’s pale face.
“Did Hip Price really tell you that?” she asked in a queer voice. Marigold, in the background, stood as if turned to the proverbial stone. Amy had put her handkerchief in her pocket.
“Yes, he did. And wrote it. I’ve had a letter from him every day for weeks.”
“So have I,” said Caroline.
June in her turn stopped crying and glared at Caroline.
“You haven’t.”
“I have. I can show them to you. And he told me I was different from any one he ever knew and that he couldn’t help being crazy about me.”
“He wrote me that, too,” said June.
They looked at each other. No more tears were shed for Hip — nor would be if he were lying forty fathoms deep.
“Did he ever kiss your hand?” demanded Caroline.
June giggled — a giggle that seemed to make everything ugly. “More than that,” she said significantly.
Marigold involuntarily brushed something from her hand. The power of thought had returned to her. She was very thankful now that she hadn’t been able to cry. There were no stains on her face. Calmly, proudly as any Lesley of them all, she drained her cup of wormwood and gall.
June began to cry again — in self-pity this time. The Pages, Marigold reflected disdainfully, had no pride.
“He called me his Little Queen,” she sobbed, “and said I had a crown of golden hair.”
To call June Page’s hair golden when it was just tow-coloured! And fancy a Little Queen with a nose like a dab of putty! Oh, it was to laugh.
Caroline did not cry. But she looked very limp. She had been also Little-Queened. “And he said my eyes were so sweet and provoking.”
To think of those round pale eyes of Caroline’s being called sweet and provoking! Oh, of course Hip had left old Simon’s gate open and bit his sister — bit her frequently. Not a doubt of it.
“He’s just been a regular mean two-faced deceitful little sneak,” said June violently, “and I hope he is drowned, I do.”
“I didn’t think a minister’s son would do that,” said Caroline mournfully. There was something especially terrible about a minister’s son doing a thing like that. Whom could one trust if not a minister’s son?
“I believe they are the worst sometimes,” said June. “Well, you can have him.”
“I don’t want him!” said Caroline superbly, remembering at last that she was consecrated.
They went away on that note. Amy looked guiltily at Marigold.
“I — I wasn’t going to tell them,” she said, “but I got letters from Hip, too. Lovely letters. I can’t believe he didn’t mean them. Of course he was just fooling them but—”
“He was fooling everybody,” said Marigold shortly. “And we needn’t worry over his being drowned. He’ll turn up safe and sound. I’m going home to write to Mother.”
Marigold did write to Mother — not telling her quite everything, however. But first she burned a packet of schoolboy love-letters. She felt as if she had been mixed up in something very grimy. And she suddenly felt a great longing to be sitting on the old wharf below Cloud of Spruce, watching the boats coming in and feeling the clear, fresh sea-breeze from the dunes blowing in her face. Oh, how she hated and despised Hip Price.
But what was it Old Grandmother had said once? — That it was the hardest thing in the world to be just.
“I guess I was as much to blame as Hip,” admitted Marigold candidly.
All that saved her self-respect was the fact that she had not told him The Secret.
5
Hip turned up safe and sound next day. He had gone for a day’s ride with Lazy Murphy’s son-the-pedlar and Lazy Murphy’s horse had taken sick eighteen miles away, in a place where there was no telephone. So Owl’s Hill folks gave up searching and Mrs. Price recovered from her fainting fits and Hip came straight up to Owl’s Hill to see Marigold. It was rather unfortunate that Hip should have selected that day for appearing out in kilts. He had thin legs.
“Come on for a walk down to the pasture-spring,” he whispered.
“No, thank you, Howard.”
Hip had never heard that an enchantment is at an end as soon as the enchanter is called by name. But he knew there was something wrong with Marigold, standing there, the very incarnation of disdain.
“What’s the matter? You don’t look as if you were glad to see me back. And I was thinking of you every minute I was away.”
“And about June and Caroline, too?” asked Marigold sweetly, as one who knew her Hip at last.
For the first time since she had known him Hip lost face.
“So they’ve blabbed,” he said. “Why, I was just seeing how much they’d believe. It was different with you — honest — You’ve got them skinned a mile.”
“I think you’d better go home,” said Marigold sarcastically. “Your mother may be anxious about you. She might even take a fainting-fit. Good-bye.”
Marigold went away stiffly, regally, without a backward glance. Hip had not drowned himself in despair over her lack of confidence, but he was for her not only dead but, as the French would say, very dead.
“He was never very int’resting, anyhow — not even as much as Johnsy,” she thought, suddenly clear-sighted.
It seemed years since she had left home. At the end of that long red road were Mother and Sylvia and Cloud of Spruce. She felt clean once more.
“I guess it was only red ink after all,” she said.
CHAPTER XIX
How It Came to Pass
1
When Marigold had gone to visit Aunt Anne and then Aunt Irene, something was started. Grandmother gloomily said,
“They’ll all be wanting her now,” and her prediction was speedily fulfilled. Aunt Marcia wanted her share of Marigold, too.
“If Anne and Irene Winthrop could have her I think I should too. She’s never spent a night in my house — my favourite brother’s child,” she said reproachfully.
So Grandmother with a look of I-told-you-so and Mother with a look of How-can-I-do-without-Marigold again co
nsented rather unwillingly.
“Jarvis is so — odd,” said Grandmother to Mother.
Grandmother had very little use for Jarvis Pringle, even if he were her son-in-law. Nobody in the clan had much use for him. He was known to have got up once in the middle of the night to dot an “i” in a letter he had written that evening. As Uncle Klon said, that was carrying things rather too far.
Marigold did not know, as the grown-ups of the clan knew, that he had lived all his life with the shadow of madness hanging over him. She didn’t know what Uncle Klon meant when he said Jarvis took the universe too seriously. But she did know she had never seen Uncle Jarvis smile. And when Uncle Jarvis once asked her if she loved God and she had said “yes,” she had the oddest feeling that she was really telling a lie, because her God was certainly not the God Uncle Jarvis was inquiring about. And she did know that she didn’t like Uncle Jarvis. She loved him, of course — you have to love your relations — but she didn’t like him — not one little bit. She always made her small self scarce when he came to visit Cloud of Spruce. She did not know he had the face of a fanatic; but she knew he had a high, narrow, knobby forehead, deep-set, intolerant eyes, austere, merciless mouth, and a probing nose, which he had a horrible habit of pulling. Also a fierce, immense, black beard which he would never even trim because that would have been un-Scriptural and contrary to the will of God.
Uncle Jarvis knew all about the will of God — or thought he did. Nobody could go to heaven who did not believe exactly as he did. He argued, or rather dogmatised, with every one. Marigold was so small a fish that she generally slipped through the meshes of his theological nets and he paid scant attention to her. But she wondered sometimes if Uncle Jarvis would really be contented in heaven. With nobody to frown at. And a dreadful God who hated to see you the least bit happy.
Nevertheless she was pleased at the prospect of another visit. Uncle Jarvis and Aunt Marcia also lived “over the bay,” which of course had a magic sound in Marigold’s ears. And she loved Aunt Marcia, who had calm, sea-blue eyes and one only doctrine — that “everybody needs a bit of spoiling now and then.” Her pies praised her in the gates and she was renowned for a lovely cake called “Upside-down cake,” the secret of which nobody else in the clan possessed. Marigold knew she would have a good time with Aunt Marcia. And Uncle Jarvis couldn’t be ‘round all the time. Grain must be cut and chores done no matter how dreadful the goings-on might be in your household during your absence.
So she went to Yarrow Lane farm, where she found a low-eaved old house under dark spruces and a garden that looked as if God smiled occasionally at least. Aunt Marcia’s garden, of course. The only thing in the gardening line Uncle Jarvis concerned himself with was the row of little round, trimmed spruces along the fence of the front yard. Uncle Jarvis really enjoyed pruning them every spring, snipping off all rebellious tips as he would have liked to snip off the holder of every doctrine he didn’t agree with.
Marigold had a room with a bed so big she felt lost in it and a small, square window looking out on the silver-tipped waves of the bay. She had the dearest little bowl to eat her porridge out of — it made even porridge taste good. And the Upside-down cake was all fond fancy had painted it.
Uncle Jarvis did not bother her much, though she was always secretly terrified at his gloomy prayers.
“Why,” Marigold wondered, “must one groan so when one talks to God?” Her own little prayers were cheerful affairs. But perhaps they oughtn’t to be.
The only unpleasant day was Sunday. Uncle Jarvis was almost as bad as the man in another of graceless Uncle Klon’s stories — who hung his cat because she caught a mouse on Sunday. When he heard Marigold laugh the first Sunday she was at Yarrow Lane he told her sternly that she must never laugh on Sunday in his house.
“Whatever may be done at godless Cloud of Spruce,” his manner seemed to say though his tongue didn’t.
2
Marigold was not long at Yarrow Lane before she picked up a chum. By the end of a week she and Bernice Willis had known each other all their lives. Aunt Marcia had rather expected Marigold to chum with Babe Kennedy on the next farm, who lived much nearer than Bernice. And Babe was very ready to be chummed with. But chumship, like kissing, goes by favour. Marigold simply did not like Babe — a pretty little doll, with hair of pale, shining, silky-red; pale green eyes, an inquisitive expression and an irritating little snigger that set Marigold’s nerves on edge. She would have none of her. Bernice was the choice of her heart — the first real friend she had ever had — the first real rival to Sylvia. Bernice lived half a mile away, with an odd old aunt in “the house behind the young spruce wood.” The very description intrigued Marigold. The young spruce wood — so delightful. What charming things must foregather in a young spruce wood. Bernice was ugly but clever. She had uncut mouse-coloured hair and big, friendly grey eyes in a thin, freckled face — a face that seemed meant for laughter, although it was generally a little sad. Her father and mother were both dead and Bernice did not seem to have any relatives in the world except the aforesaid odd old aunt. Lots of the girls in Ladore — even magical, over-the-bay places have to have post-office names — didn’t like her.
But it happened that she and Marigold talked the same language — liked the same things. They could both have supped on a saucer of moonshine and felt no hunger — for a time, anyhow. They both understood the stories the wind told. They both liked silk-soft kittens and the little fir woods that ran venturesomely down to the shore and the dancing harbour ripples like songs. A bluebird singing on the point of a picket in the Yarrow Lane thrilled them and an imaginary trip to the moon was all in the evening’s work. And they made every day a gay adventure for themselves.
“You’ll find out she isn’t as good as you think her,” Babe told Marigold with sinister significance.
But that, Marigold believed, was only Babe’s jealousy.
3
Then one night Marigold and Bernice had the supreme bliss of sleeping together. And not only of sleeping together but sleeping in the granary-loft — the little white granary across the small, hollow field carpeted with sheets of green moss and full of birch-trees. Such a romantic thing.
Aunt Marcia had told Marigold to ask Bernice to stay all night with her. And soon after Bernice’s arrival two loaded automobiles came out from Charlottetown. The guests must be put up somehow for the night. The little house was taxed to its limit. Marigold’s room must be commandeered in the emergency. But what was the matter with sleeping in the neat little granary-loft this warm September night? Aunt Marcia would make them up a comfortable bed. If they wouldn’t be afraid!
Afraid! Bernice and Marigold hooted at the idea. They were all for it at once. So after they had prowled about till nearly ten — Bernice had gone to bed at eight every night of her life and Marigold was supposed to go — they went through the moonlit birches with their nighties under their arms and a huge piece of apple-pie in their paws. Aunt Marcia actually let people eat pie at night. Perhaps that accounted for some of Uncle Jarvis’s religious gloom. They took a drink from the truly delightful stoned-up spring behind the granary, which Uncle Jarvis called the barn-well, and then mounted the outside granary stairs to the loft. Its bare boards were beautifully white-washed, and Aunt Marcia had made up a bed on the floor and covered it with a charming white quilt that had red “rising suns” all over it. And she had set a lighted candle on a barrel for them, feeling that it would never do to give them a kerosene lamp in the granary.
They bolted the door — more romance — and blew out the candle to have the fun of undressing by moonlight.
It was when they were ready for bed that Marigold made her shocking discovery.
“Now, let’s say our prayers and snuggle down for a good jaw,” she said. “We can talk just as long as we like to-night and nobody to pound on the wall and tell us to stop.”
Bernice turned from the loft window whence she had been gazing rapturously on the glimpse of moon
lit bay over the birches.
“I never say any prayers,” she announced calmly.
Marigold gasped.
“Why, Bernice Willis, that is wicked. Aren’t you afraid God will punish you?”
“There isn’t any God,” said Bernice, “and I won’t pray to any one I don’t believe in.”
Marigold stared at her. This thing had been said — and yet the granary still stood and Bernice still stood, a slim, white sceptic in the moonlight.
“But — but — Bernice, there must be a God.”
“How do you know?”
“Mother told me,” said Marigold, gasping at the first argument that presented itself to her dumbfounded mind.
“She told you there was a Santa Claus, too, didn’t she?” asked Bernice relentlessly. “Mind you, I’d like to believe in God. But I can’t.”
“Why not?” wondered Marigold helplessly.
“Because — because I haven’t anybody. Nobody but Aunt Harriet — and she’s only a half-aunt and she doesn’t like me a bit. Father and mother are dead — and she won’t even talk to me about them. I had a kitten and it died and she won’t let me have another. As for this praying-business, I used to pray. Once when I was so small I can just remember it Aunt Harriet sent me down to the store on an errand. The wind was awful cold. And I knelt right down on the road behind a little spruce-bush and asked God to make the wind warmer before I came out of the store. He didn’t — it was colder than ever and right in my face. And when my kitten took sick I asked God to make it well. But it died. And then I knew there was no God. Because if there had been He wouldn’t have let my kitten die when it was the only thing I had to love. So I never prayed any more. Of course I have to kneel down when Aunt Harriet has family prayers. But I just kneel and make faces at God.”
“You just said you didn’t believe in Him,” cried Marigold.
“Well—” Bernice was not going to be posed, “I just make faces at the idea of Him.”
So this, Marigold reflected bitterly, was what Babe Kennedy had meant.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 477