“If I were my grandmother I’d order you to be knouted to death—”
“If I were my grandmother I’d turn you over my knees and spank you,” said Marigold intrepidly.
Varvara at once grew calm — deadly, stonily calm.
“If you don’t let me have that chocolate cake for my supper I’ll go out and climb what you call the apple-barn roof and jump down.”
“You can’t scare me with that,” said Marigold scornfully.
Varvara turned without another word and marched out. Marigold followed her a little uneasily. Of course she was only bluffing. She wouldn’t do that. Why, it would kill her. Even this wild creature couldn’t do a thing like that.
Varvara was running nimbly up the ladder. In another second she was on the flat top of the gambrel roof.
“Now, will you let me have the chocolate cake?” she cried.
“No,” said Marigold resolutely.
Varvara jumped. Marigold screamed. She shut her eyes in anguish and opened them expecting to see Varvara dead and broken on the stones of the path below. What she saw was Varvara hanging, shrieking on the pine-tree by the apple-barn. Her dress had billowed out and caught on the stub of a lopped branch.
Marigold ran to her frantically.
“Oh, you can have the chocolate cake — you can have anything.”
“How am I to get down?” moaned Varvara, whose temper and determination had evaporated between heaven and earth.
“I’ll bring up the step-ladder. I think you can reach it,” gasped Marigold.
Varvara managed to escape by the grace of the step-ladder, though she tore her dress woefully in the process.
“I always do just what I say I’ll do,” she remarked coolly.
“Just look at your dress,” shivered Marigold.
“I am more important than my dress,” said Varvara loftily.
Marigold was trembling in every limb as she went back to the pantry. Suppose Varvara really had fallen on those stones. Grandmother had said those girls from the States would do anything. Marigold believed it.
“Just look how beautifully I’ve decorated the table,” said Varvara proudly.
Marigold looked. Grandmother’s Killarney roses were drooping artistically in the big green basket. Oh, yes, artistically. Varvara had the knack.
“Grandmother told me I wasn’t to pick any of those roses,” wailed Marigold.
“Well, you didn’t, did you, you darling donkey? Tell her I did it.”
5
The real quarrel did not come until after supper. They had had quite a jolly supper. Varvara was so funny and interesting and said such dreadful things about the picture of Queen Victoria on the dining-room wall.
“Doesn’t she look like somebody’s old cook with a lace curtain on her head?”
It was really a terrible chromo, originally sent out as a “supplement” with a Montreal paper and framed in hundreds of houses all over the loyal Island. It represented the good queen with a broad blue ribbon across her breast and a crown on her head filled with diamonds, the least of which was as big as a walnut. From the crown descended the aforesaid lace curtain around the face and bust of the queen, and what wasn’t lace curtain was diamonds — on ears and throat and breast and hand and arm. Marigold had always had much the same opinion as Varvara about it and had once expressed it. Only once. Grandmother had looked at her as if she had committed lese-majeste and said,
“That is Queen Victoria,” as if Marigold hadn’t known it.
But Marigold wasn’t going to have girls from the States coming in and making fun of the royal family.
“I don’t think you have any business to talk like that of our queen,” she said haughtily.
“Silly — she was Mother’s aunt,” retorted Varvara. “Mother remembers her well. She wasn’t a bit handsome, but I’m sure she never looked like that. If that’s where you get your ideas of a princess’s dress from I don’t wonder you don’t think I’m one. Marigold, this chocolate cake is simply topping.”
Varvara ate about half of the chocolate cake and paid it a compliment with every piece. Well, reflected Marigold complacently, certainly Cloud of Spruce cookery was good enough for anybody even if she had been the princess she pretended to be. Varvara certainly was — nice. One couldn’t help liking her. Marigold decided that after the dishes were washed she would take Varvara through The Magic Door and the Green Gate and introduce her to Sylvia.
But when she went out to the garden after washing the dishes she found Varvara tormenting her toad — her own pet toad who lived under the yellow rose-bush and knew her. Marigold was certain he knew her. And here was this abominable girl poking him with a sharp stick that must hurt him terribly.
“You stop that!” she cried.
“I won’t — it’s fun,” retorted Varvara. “I’m going to kill it — poke it to death.”
Marigold darted forward and wrenched the stick out of Varvara’s hand. She broke it in three pieces and confronted her self-invited guest in a true Lesleyan anger.
“You shall not hurt my toad,” she said superbly. “I don’t care what you threaten — not one bit. You can jump off the apple-barn or down the well or go and throw yourself into the harbour. But you shan’t kill my toad, Miss Princess!”
The derision that Marigold contrived to put into that “princess” is untransferable to paper. Varvara suddenly was in a most terrible temper. She was almost like an animal in her rage. She bared her teeth and dilated her eyes. Her very hair seemed to bristle.
“Pig! Louse! Flea!” she snarled. “Moon-calf! Beast!” Oh, the venom she contrived to put into her epithets. “You’d make God laugh! Cry-baby! Snivelling thing!”
Marigold was crying, but it was with rage. Russian princesses,” real or pretended, had no monopoly of temper.
“You have the face of a monkey,” Marigold cried.
“I’ll — pull — your — ears — out — by — the — roots,” said Varvara, with a horrible kind of deliberate devilishness.
She hurled herself against Marigold. She pulled Marigold’s hair and she slapped Marigold’s face. Marigold had never been so manhandled in her life. She, Marigold Lesley. She struck out blindly and found Varvara’s nose. She gave it a fierce, sudden tweak. Varvara emitted a malignant yowl and tore herself loose.
“You — you — do you think you can use me like this — me?”
“Haven’t I done it?” said Marigold triumphantly.
Varvara looked around. On a garden seat lay Grandmother’s shears. With a yell like a demon she pounced on them. Before Marigold could run or stir there was a sudden fierce click — another — and Marigold’s two pale gold braids were dangling limply in Varvara’s beautiful hand.
“Oh!” shrieked Marigold, clapping her hands to her shorn head.
Suddenly Varvara laughed. Her brief insanity had passed. She dropped the shears and the golden tresses and flung her arms around Marigold.
“Let’s kiss and make up. Mustn’t let a little thing like this spoil a whole day. Say you forgive me, darlingest.”
“Darlingest” said it dazedly. She didn’t want to — but she did. This wild girl of laughter and jest had a hundred faults and the one great virtue of charm. She would always be forgiven anything.
But Marigold, in spite of her shorn tresses, was almost glad to see Grandmother and Mother driving into the yard.
“Why? What?” began Grandmother, staring at Marigold’s head.
“I did it,” interposed the ragged, flushed, juice-stained Varvara resolutely. “You are not to blame her for it. It was all my doings. I did it because I was furious, but I’m glad. You’ll have to let her have it trimmed decently now. And I ate the chocolate cake and picked the roses and jumped on the feather bed. She is not to be scolded at all for it. Remember that.”
Grandmother made an involuntary step forward. The Princess Varvara had the narrowest escape of her royal life.
“Who are you?” demanded Grandmother.
Varvara told her as she had told Marigold. With this difference. She was believed. Grandmother knew all about the Vice-Regal visit to Prince Edward Island, and she had seen Varvara’s picture in the Charlottetown Patriot.
Grandmother set her lips together. One couldn’t, of course, scold a grand-niece of Queen Victoria and the daughter of a Russian Prince. One couldn’t. But, oh, if one only could!
An automobile stopped at the gate. A young man and an elderly lady got out of it and came up the walk. A very fine, tall, stately lady, with diamonds winking on her fingers. Her hair snow-white, her face long, her nose long. She could never have been beautiful but she was not under any necessity of being beautiful.
“There’s Aunt Clara and Lord Percy,” whispered Varvara to Marigold. “I can see she’s mad all over — and there’s so much of her to get mad. Won’t I get a roasting!”
Marigold stiffened in horror. A dreadful conviction came over her that Varvara really was the princess she had claimed to be.
And she had pulled her nose!
The wonderful, great lady walked past Varvara without even looking at her — without looking at anything, indeed. Yet one felt she saw everything and took in the whole situation even to Varvara’s muddy dangling rags and dirty face.
“I am sorry,” she said to Grandmother, “that my naughty little runaway niece should have given you so much trouble.”
“She has not been any trouble to us,” said Grandmother graciously, as one queen to another. “I am very sorry I was not at home this afternoon” — combining truth with courtesy to a remarkable degree.
The great lady turned to Varvara.
“Come, my dear,” she said softly and sweetly.
Varvara disregarded her for a moment. She sprang past her and embraced Marigold tempestuously.
“If you were sugar I’d eat you up. Promise me you’ll always love me — even if you never see me again. Promise — as long as grass grows and water runs. Promise.”
“I will — oh, I will,” gasped Marigold sincerely. It was very odd, but in spite of everything she felt that she did and would love Varvara devotedly.
“I’ve had such a satisfying time to-day,” said Varvara. “They can’t take that from me. I really didn’t mean to kill your old toad. And you’ve got your hair bobbed. You can thank me and God for that.”
She danced off to the gate, ignoring Lady Clara but throwing an airy kiss to Grandmother. “Laugh, Marigold, laugh,” she called imperiously from the car. “I like to leave people laughing.”
Marigold managed the ghost of a laugh, after which Varvara deliberately turned a complete double somersault before everybody and hopped into the back seat. Lord Percy smiled at Mother. Mother was a very pretty woman.
“An incorrigible little demon,” he said.
6
“I think,” said Grandmother quite quietly when she had heard the whole tale, “that princesses are rather too strenuous playmates for you. Perhaps, after all, your imaginary Sylvia is really a better companion.”
Marigold thought so too. She ran happily through the dreamy peace of the orchard to meet the twilight that was creeping out of the spruce-grove. Back to Sylvia, her comrade of star-shine and moon-mist, who did not pull hair and slap — or provoke pulling and slapping — Sylvia, who was waiting for her in the shadows beyond the Green Gate. She was very well satisfied with Sylvia again. It was just as Grandmother had said. Princesses were too — too — what was it? Too it, anyhow.
She was glad she hadn’t told her about Sylvia. She was glad she hadn’t shown her the dear fat grey kittens in the apple-barn. Who knew but Varvara would have held them up by their tails? And though she felt sure she could never forget Princess Varvara — the tang of her — the magic of her mirth and storms — there was a queer, bitter little regret far down in her soul.
She had been used to pretend “Suppose a Princess dropped in to tea.” And it had happened — and she hadn’t known it. Besides Varvara wasn’t a bit like a Princess. The way she had gobbled things down at supper. Marigold was the poorer for a lost illusion.
Meanwhile down in Cloud of Spruce Mother was putting away Marigold’s golden braids and crying over them. Grandmother was girding an apron on with a stern countenance, to make another chocolate cake, late as it was. Salome was counting the hop-and-go-fetch-its and wondering how two children could ever have eaten so many in one afternoon. Marigold’s appetite was never very extensive.
“I’ll bet that princess will have stomach-ache to-night if she never had it before,” she thought vindictively. And Lucifer and the Witch of Endor were talking over the general cussedness of things under the milk bench.
“Take it from me,” Lucifer was saying, “princesses aren’t what they used to be in the good old days.”
CHAPTER XI
A Counsel of Perfection
1
There was really only one creature in the world whom Marigold hated — apart from Clementine, who couldn’t be said to be in the world. And that creature was Gwendolen Vincent Lesley — in the family Bible and on the lips of Aunt Josephine. Everywhere else she was Gwennie, the daughter of “Uncle” Luther Lesley, who lived away down east at Rush Hill. She was a second cousin of Marigold’s and Marigold had never seen her. Nevertheless she hated her, in her up-rising and her down-sitting, by night and by day, Sundays as well as week-days. And the cause of this hatred was Aunt Josephine.
Aunt Josephine, who was really a second cousin, was a tall severe lady with a pronounced chin and stabbing black eyes which Marigold always felt must see to her very bones — X-ray eyes, Uncle Klon called them. She lived in Charlottetown, when she was home — which wasn’t often. Aunt Josephine was an old maid; not a bachelor girl or a single woman but a genuine dyed-in-the-wool old maid. Lazarre added that she “lived on” her relations; by which cannibalish statement he meant that Aunt Josephine was fonder of visiting round than of staying home. She was especially fond of Cloud of Spruce and came as often as she decently could, and every time she came she praised Gwendolen Vincent Lesley to the skies. But she never praised Marigold.
The very first time she had ever seen Marigold she had said, looking at her scrutinisingly,
“Well, you have your father’s nose beyond any doubt.”
Marigold had never known that her father’s nose had been his worst point, but she knew Aunt Josephine was not being complimentary.
“Gwendolen Lesley has such a beautiful little nose,” continued Aunt Josphine, who had just come from a visit to Luther’s. “Purely Grecian. But then everything about her is beautiful. I have never in all my life seen such a lovely child. And her disposition is as charming as her face. She is very clever, too, and led her class of twenty in school last term. She showed me the picture of an angel in her favourite book of Bible stories and said, ‘That is my model, Aunty.’”
Who wouldn’t hate Gwendolen after that? And that was only the beginning. All through that visit and every succeeding visit Aunt Josephine prated about the inexhaustible perfections of Gwendolen Vincent, in season and out of season.
Gwendolen, it appeared, was so conscientious that she wrote down every day all the time she had spent in idleness and prayed over it. She had never, it seemed, given any one a moment’s worry since she was born. She had taken the honour diploma for Sabbath-school attendance — Aunt Josephine never said “Sunday” — every year since she had begun going.
“She is such a spiritual child,” said Aunt Josephine.
“Would she jump if you stuck a pin in her?” asked Marigold.
Grandmother frowned and Mother looked shocked — with a glint of unlawful, unLesleyan amusement behind the shock — and Aunt Josephine looked coldly at her.
“Gwendolen is never pert,” she rebuked.
It also transpired that Gwendolen always repeated hymns to herself before going to sleep. Marigold, who spent her pre-sleep hours in an orgy of wonderful imagery adventures, felt miserably how far short she fell of Gwendolen Vincent. And Gwendolen alwa
ys ate just what was put before her and never ate too much.
“I never saw a child so free from greediness,” said Aunt Josephine.
Marigold wondered uneasily if Aunt Josephine had noticed her taking that third tart.
And with all this Gwendolen, it appeared, was “sensible.” Sensible! Marigold knew what that meant. Somebody who would use roses to make soup of if she could.
Gwendolen had never had her hair bobbed.
“And she has such wonderful, luxuriant, thick, long, shining, glossy curls,” said Aunt Josephine, who would have added some more adjectives to the curls if she could have thought of them.
Grandmother, who did not approve of bobbed hair, looked scornfully at Marigold’s sleek, cropped head. Marigold, who had never before known a pang of jealousy in regard to a living creature, was rent with its anguish now. Oh, how she hated this paragon of a Gwendolen Vincent Lesley — this angelic and spiritual being, who took honour diplomas and led her class but who yet — Marigold clutched avidly at the recollection of the note Gwennie had written her at Christmas — didn’t appear to know that “sapphire” shouldn’t be spelled “saffire.”
Gwendolen Vincent was “tidy.” She was brave—”not afraid of thunderstorms,” said Aunt Josephine when Marigold cowered in Mother’s lap during a terrible one. She always did exactly what she was told—”See that, Marigold,” said Grandmother. She never slammed doors — Marigold had just slammed one. She was a wonderful cook for her age. She was never late for meals—”See that, Marigold,” said Mother. She never mislaid anything. She always cleaned her teeth after every meal. She never used slang. She never interrupted. She never made grammatical errors. She had perfect teeth — Marigold’s eye-teeth were just a wee bit too prominent. She was never tomboyish — Marigold had been swinging on a gate. She never was too curious about anything — Marigold had been asking questions. She always was early to bed and early to rise because she knew it was the way and the only way to be healthy and wealthy and wise.
“I don’t believe that,” said Marigold rudely. “Phidime gets up at five o’clock every morning of his life and he’s the poorest man in Harmony.”
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 465
