The Complete Works of L M Montgomery

by L. M. Montgomery

4

  Marigold slept — or did not sleep — in Annabel’s room, where there was a man-hole in the ceiling with a black, spooky look. But she never thought of being frightened. What were spooks and devils and things generally compared to the horror of IT. The rain began to pour down — the fir-boughs tapped against the windows. The blankets, which Cousin Teresa had thoughtfully put on because the June night was cold, simply reeked of mothballs. If she were only in her own bed at home between fragrant sheets. Marigold thought the night would never end.

  In the morning she had her breakfast at a little table by herself in the corner of the kitchen. Once Nancy slipped in and snuggled down beside her. “I don’t care if you have got — them — I love you just the same,” said Nancy loyally.

  “Nancy Walker! you come right out of there,” said Beulah’s sharp voice from the door. “Aunt Stasia said you weren’t to go near her.”

  Nancy went out, crying.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry for you,” said Beulah, before she turned away.

  The malice of Beulah’s smile was hard to bear and the pity of Beulah bit deep. Marigold went dismally back to Annabel’s room — where the bed had already been stripped to the bones. She could see Cousin Teresa busy over tubs in the wash-house. Nancy was carrying a great sheaf of mauve and gold irises across the road to Johnson’s, to help decorate for the party.

  Away over the harbour was a soft blur that was Cloud of Spruce — dear Cloud of Spruce — dear home. If she were only there! But Aunt Stasia had told her they could not take her home until after the party. A fog was creeping up to Blue Water Beach. It crept on and on — it blotted out the harbour — it blotted out the distant shore of Cloud of Spruce — it blotted out the world. She was alone in the universe with her terrible, mysterious shame. Poor Marigold’s Lesley spirit failed her at last. She broke down and cried.

  Aunt Teresa drove her home that evening. Again she was coming home from a visit in disgrace. And when they reached Cloud of Spruce, Mother was away. Thinking Marigold would not be home till Sunday evening, she had gone to South Harmony for a visit. Marigold felt she simply could not bear it.

  Cousin Teresa whispered mysteriously to Grandmother.

  “Impossible,” cried Grandmother peevishly.

  “We found one,” said Cousin Teresa positively.

  One what? Oh, if Marigold only knew what!

  “Only one.” Grandmother’s tone implied that Stasia had made a great deal of fuss over a trifle. Grandmother herself would have made enough fuss about IT if she had discovered it. But when Stasia made the fuss that was a cat of a different stripe.

  “Have you — a comb?” whispered Cousin Teresa.

  Grandmother nodded haughtily. She took Marigold upstairs to her room and gave her head a merciless combing with an odd little kind of comb such as Marigold had never seen before. Then she brought her down again.

  “No results,” she said crisply. “I believe Stasia simply imagined it.”

  “I saw IT myself,” said Cousin Teresa, a trifle shrewishly. She drove away a little offended. Marigold sat down disconsolately on the veranda steps. She dared not ask Grandmother anything. Grandmother was annoyed and when Grandmother was annoyed she was very aloof. Moreover, she had contrived to make Marigold feel that she was in some terrible disgrace — that she had done something no Lesley ever should do. And yet what she had done or how she was responsible, Marigold hadn’t the slightest idea. Oh, if Mother were only home!

  Then Aunt Marigold came — almost as good as Mother — almost as gentle and tender and understanding. She had been talking with Grandmother.

  “So you’ve been and gone and got into a scrape, Marigold,” she said, laughing. “Never mind, precious. There seems to have been only one.”

  “One what?” demanded Marigold passionately. She simply could not stand this hideous suspense and ignorance any longer. “Aunt Marigold — please — please do tell me what is the matter with my head?”

  Aunt Marigold stared.

  “Marigold, you dear funny thing, do you mean you don’t know?”

  Marigold nodded, her eyes like wet pansies.

  “And I’ve just got to know,” she said desperately.

  Aunt Marigold explained.

  “It’s apt to happen to any child who goes to a public school,” she concluded comfortingly.

  “Pshaw, is that all?” said Marigold. “I guess I got IT when I changed hats with that new girl day before yesterday.”

  She was so happy she could have cried for joy. Had there then ever been such a starry sky? Such a dear misty, new moon? Such dancing northern lights over the harbour? Down the road Lazarre’s dog and Phidime’s dog were talking about their feelings at the top of their voices. And Sylvia up in the cloud of spruce. It was too late to go to her to-night, but she would be there in the morning. Marigold blew an airy kiss to the hill. No germs. No leprosy. Aunt Stasia had made all this fuss about so small a matter. Marigold thought bitterly of the party, the unworn dress, the lost two nights with dear Nancy.

  “Aunt Stasia is—” began Aunt Marigold. Then she suddenly snapped her lips together. After all, there was such a thing as clan loyalty, especially in the hearing of the rising generation.

  “An old fool,” said Marigold, sweetly and distinctly.

  CHAPTER IX

  A Lesley Christmas

  1

  It was a Lesley tradition to celebrate Christmas by a royal reunion, and this year it was the turn of Cloud of Spruce. This was the first time it had happened in Marigold’s memory, and she was full of delighted anticipation. At heart a thorough clansman, she loved, without knowing she loved, all the old clan customs and beliefs and follies and wisdoms as immutable as law of Mede and Persian. They were all part of that int’resting world where she lived and moved and had her being — a world which could never be dull for Marigold, who possessed the talismanic power of flinging something glamorous over the most commonplace fact of life. As Aunt Marigold said, Marigold saw the soul of things as well as the things themselves.

  There were weeks of preparation in which Marigold revelled. Grandmother and Mother and Salome worked like slaves, cleaning Cloud of Spruce from attic to cellar. The last week was given over to cooking. Such things as were concocted in that house! Such weighings and measurings and mixings! Mother thought they were really being too lavish, but for once Grandmother counted no cost.

  “I have seen many things come into fashion and go out of fashion but a good meal abides,” she said oracularly.

  Marigold thrilled with bliss because she was permitted to help. It was such fun to beat egg-whites until you could hold the bowl upside down, and dig the kinkly meats out of the walnuts. Grandmother made a big panful of Devonshire clotted cream. Mother made the mince pies that would be taken in with a sprig of holly stuck in them — piping hot, for lukewarm mince pies were an abomination at Cloud of Spruce. And there was a pound cake that required thirty-two eggs — an extravagance known at Cloud of Spruce only when there was a “reunion.” Salome baked a whole box of what she called “hop-and-go-fetch-its” — dear, humpy little cakes with raisins in them and icing over the tops and pink candies over that. Marigold knew what the hop-and-go-fetch-its were for. Just for “pieces” for herself and all the children who came.

  Besides, Marigold had her recitation to learn. It was one of the Christmas reunion customs to have a “programme” of speeches and songs and recitations in the parlour after dinner, while the hostesses were cleaning up and washing the dishes. Aunt Marigold had found a cute little recitation for Marigold, and Mother had trained her in the appropriate gestures and inflections. It was to be her first performance of the kind, and Marigold was very anxious to do well. She was not in the least afraid that she wouldn’t. She knew her “piece” so perfectly that she could have recited it standing on her head, and every gesture came pat to the word, ending with the graceful little “curtsey” Mother was at such pains to teach her. Beulah would be there and Marigold was sure that curtsey would fi
nish her completely.

  2

  Finally the great day of the feast came. Outside it was a grey squally day, filling the little empty nests in the maple-trees full of snow and surrounding the sad black harbour with meadows of white. But inside there was gaiety and Christmas magic in the very air. The bannisters were garlanded with greenery, the windows hung with crimson rings. The big sideboard was a delectable mountain of good things. The cream was whipped for the banana cake; the kitchen range was singing a lyric of beech and maple; and Salome was purring with importance. The spare room bed really looked too beautiful to be slept in. Grandmother’s new pillow slips with crocheted lace six inches deep were on the pillows and Mother had sewed little flat bags of lavender inside them. The Christmas-tree in the hall was covered with lovely red and gold and blue and silver bubbles, such as fairies must have blown. Every one was dressed up — Mother in her brown velvet with little amber earrings against her white neck, Grandmother in her best black silk with a wonderful crêpy purple shawl which was kept in perfumed tissue paper in the lower drawer of the spare room bureau all the year round, save only for big clan affairs like this. Even Lucifer had a new scarlet silk neck-bow, which he considered mere vanity and vexation of spirit.

  So far Christmas-Day had been flawless for Marigold. She had got lovely presents from everybody; even Lazarre had given her a near-silver mouse with a blue velvet pin-cushion erupting from its back. Marigold secretly thought it rather awful. It looked as if the mouse wasn’t — healthy. But she wouldn’t have hurt Lazarre’s feelings for the world by letting him suspect this. Again Marigold was disposed to thank goodness people did not know what you thought.

  3

  It was such fun to watch the arrivals from the window in Salome’s room, where she had her shelf of potted plants. The ivies and petunias fell down in a green screen behind which Marigold could peep without being seen — or being caught at it by Grandmother, who thought “peeking” at visitors extremely bad manners. Bad manners it might be, but it was too int’resting to give up. The folks getting out of the cars and buggies and cutters — for all three were in use today — would have been amazed by the things Marigold, whom they still thought of as a mere baby, knew about them.

  There was Uncle Peter’s Pete, who had poured whiskey into his aunt’s dandelion wine and set her drunk. How solemn and stupid he looked, not at all like a boy who would do such a trick. But you could never tell. And Aunt Katherine, who — so Uncle Klon had said — was a witch and turned herself into a grey cat at night. Marigold no longer believed that but she liked to play with the idea. Aunt Katherine certainly looked like a grey cat in her grey coat trimmed with grey fur; but her rosy smiling face was not properly witch-like. Only Uncle Klon said they were the worst kind of witches — the kind that didn’t look like witches.

  Uncle Mark and Uncle Jerry were coming up the walk together. At some former Christmas feast they had quarrelled and Uncle Mark had pulled Uncle Jerry’s nose. It was years before they spoke. But they seemed on good terms now. Even Old Aunt Kitty, who was really only a distant third cousin, was coming with Uncle Jarvis and Aunt Marcia. Aunt Kitty, whose bonnet had fallen off one day when she was sitting in the front pew of the old Harmony church gallery, peering over the railing to see who was sitting below. Aunt Kitty had nearly pitched after the bonnet herself in her frantic effort to grab it and had only been saved by old Mr. Peasely catching hold of her skirt. It had been a gay, wild bonnet of ostrich plumes and flowers, and its descent had made something of a sensation, especially since, by some impish trick of chance, it had landed squarely on Elder Beamish’s bald head as neatly as if it had been fitted on. The Beamishes and the Kittys — Marigold couldn’t remember Aunt Kitty’s family name — had never been good friends and this incident didn’t help matters any. Aunt Kitty looked decorous enough now as she hobbled up the walk leaning on her cane, but she had been a wild old girl at one time, Uncle Klon said.

  Aunty Clo was coming, too — who really was an aunt of sorts, though Marigold never could get her placed. She did not like Aunty Clo and neither did Uncle Klon, who vowed she was certainly very much too ugly to live. “She is really lovable under her skin,” Aunt Marigold had said, fresh from a reading of Kipling. “Then for heaven’s sake, tell her to take her skin off,” Uncle Klon had retorted.

  Uncle Archibald’s Martin and his wife Jenny. They were a by-word for their terrible quarrels, but Aunt Marigold declared they loved each other between times enough to make up for it. Martin had left his car at the gate and she saw him stop Jenny and kiss her under the Scotch pine. Before dinner was over they were calling each other awful names across the table and scandalising the whole clan. But as Marigold listened to the amazing epithets she thought of that long kiss under the pine and wondered if a kiss like that wasn’t worth a lot of hard names.

  Aunt Sybilla, who “went in for spiritualism.” Marigold didn’t know what spiritualism was but had a vague idea that it had to do with liquor. Still, Aunt Sybilla didn’t look like that.

  Uncle Charlie, whose laughter boomed over the whole garden, and Garnet Lesley, who would come to a bad end — so every one said. It was int’resting to speculate concerning that bad end. George Lesley, who was going to be married to Mary Patterson. Marigold liked George. “I wish he would wait till I grow up,” she thought. “I believe he would like me better than Mary, because there is no fun in her. There is a good deal in me when my conscience doesn’t bother me.”

  Gloomy Uncle Jarvis, with his fierce black beard, who never read any book but the Bible and was always “talking religion” to every one within five minutes of meeting them. Aunt Honora — who must have had her face screwed up one time when the wind changed and who had taken a vow never to marry—”quite unnecessarily,” Uncle Klon said. Uncle Obadiah, whose great ears stuck out like flaps. Uncle Dan, who had a glass eye and thought nobody knew of it. And last of all Uncle Milton and Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Nora. Thirty years before Uncle Milton had jilted Aunt Nora and when he married Aunt Charlotte, Aunt Nora had decked herself out in widow’s weeds and gone to the wedding! And now here they were coming up the walk together, chatting amiably about the weather and their rheumatism. It was very int’resting, looking down on them like this when they couldn’t see her, but Marigold paid for her fun when the time came to go in to the parlour and speak to everybody. It was a dreadful ordeal and she shrank back against Mother.

  “You must learn to go into a room without thinking every one is staring at you,” said Grandmother.

  “But they do stare,” shuddered Marigold. “They’re all looking at me to see how much I’ve grown since the last time or who I look like now. And Aunt Josephine will say I’m not as tall for my age as Gwennie. You know she will.”

  “It won’t kill you if she does,” said Grandmother.

  “You must act like a lady,” whispered Mother.

  “Don’t be a coward,” said Old Grandmother from a faraway moonlit orchard.

  It was Old Grandmother who did the trick. Marigold went through the ordeal of handshaking with her head up and her cheeks so crimson that even Aunt Josephine thought her complexion much better. The “big” dinner was in the orchard room, and any one looking at the table would have known that the good old days when nobody bothered about balanced rations had not yet wholly passed at Cloud of Spruce. But Marigold and all the other small fry had theirs in the dining-room.

  Marigold rejoiced over this. She never really enjoyed a meal in the orchard room, because she was so busy hating Clementine. They were catered to by Salome, who saw that they all had plenty of dressing and a piece of banana cake besides pudding. Even Uncle Peter’s Pete, who had been known to say he wished a fellow could eat two Christmas dinners at once, was satisfied. So everything was beautiful until dinner was over and the “programme” under way in the parlour. And then Marigold crashed down to defeat and not even Old Grandmother’s shade could help her.

  She got up to say her recitation — and not one word could she r
emember of it. She stood there before thousands — more or less — of faces, and could not even recall the title. It was all Uncle Peter’s Pete’s fault, so Marigold always vowed. Just before her name was called he had whispered into the back of her neck, “You haven’t washed behind your ears.” Marigold knew that territory had been washed — Salome had seen to that — but it rattled her nevertheless. And now she stood dazed, frantic, coming out with goose-flesh all over her body. If Mother had been there just to say the first line — Marigold knew she could go on if she could just remember the first line. But Mother was out helping with the dishes. And there was Pete grinning and Beulah gleefully contemptuous and Nancy squirming in sympathy.

  Marigold shut her eyes in a desperate effort to forget every one and straightway saw the most astounding things. Aunt Emma’s big cameo brooch with Uncle Ned’s hair in it expanded to gigantic size, and Aunt Emma fastened to it — Uncle Jerry with a long nose pulled out like the elephant’s child — Uncle Peter’s Pete’s aunt dancing drunkenly after dandelion wine — Aunt Katherine, a grey cat riding on a broomstick — Aunt Kitty falling headlong after her bonnet — Aunty Clo with her skin off — Uncle Obadiah, just a pair of enormous ears with a tiny manikin between them — Uncle Dan with just one huge eye winking at her all the time —

  Dizzy Marigold opened her eyes to come back to reality from that fantastic world into which she had been plunged. But still she could not get that first line.

  “Come, come, have you got a bone in your throat?” said Uncle Paul.

  “Cat’s got her tongue,” giggled Uncle Peter’s Pete.

  “Bit off more than you can chew, eh,” said Uncle Charlie, good-naturedly.

  Beulah giggled. Flesh and blood could bear no more. Marigold rushed from the room — flew upstairs — tore through Mother’s room — slammed shut her door and hurled herself on her bed in an agony of shame and humiliation.

  She huddled there all the rest of the afternoon. Mother and Grandmother and Salome were too busy to think about her. Nancy searched but could not find her. Marigold wept in her pillows and wondered what they were saying about her. I don’t know if it would have comforted her any had she known they were not thinking about her at all. What was a tragedy to her was only a passing incident to them.