“And now,” concluded Paula with tragic earnestness, “both of you ask yourselves this question, ‘Am I a child of God or of the devil?’”
Mats thought it was horrid to be confronted with such a problem.
“Of course I’m not a child of the devil,” she said indignantly.
But Marigold was all at sea. Under the spell of Paula’s eloquence she did not know what her ancestry ought to be.
“What’ll — we do — about it — if we are?” she asked unsteadily.
“Repent. Repent of your sins.”
“Oh, I haven’t any sins to repent of,” said Mats, relieved.
“You can never go to heaven if you haven’t committed sins, because you can’t repent of them and be forgiven,” said Paula inexorably.
This new kind of theology dumbfounded Mats. While she was wrestling with it, Paula’s mesmeric eyes were on Marigold.
“What would — you call sins?” Marigold asked timidly.
“Have you ever read stories that weren’t true?” demanded Paula.
“Ye-es — and—” Marigold was seized with the torturing delight of confession, “and — made them up — too.”
“Do you mean to say you’ve lied?”
“Oh, no. Not lies. Not lies. I mean—”
“They must be lies if they weren’t true.”
“Well — perhaps. And I’ve thought of — things — when Uncle Charlie was having family prayers.”
“What things?” said Paula relentlessly.
“I — I thought of a door in a picture on the wall — I thought of opening it — and going in — seeing what was inside — what people lived there—”
Paula waved her hand. After all what did it matter if Marigold did think of queer things while Charlie Marshall was praying? What did his prayers matter? Paula was after things that mattered.
“Have you ever eaten meat?”
“Why — yes — is that—”
“Its wicked — very wicked. To sacrifice life to your appetites. Oh, shame!”
Shame, indeed!
Marigold writhed with it. It was intolerable to have Paula looking at her in such scorn. Paula saw the shame and promptly assuaged it.
“Never mind. You didn’t know. I’ve et meat — too — till last spring. I had an awful rash. I knew it was a judgment because I’d done something wrong. I knew it was eating meat — Father said so. He said the finger of God had touched me. So I vowed I’d never eat any more. Oh, how my conscience vexed me. It was awful how I suffered.”
There was real anguish in Paula’s voice. She stood, a flaming, fascinating figure under the old pine — a young priestess, inspired, devoted. Marigold felt she would follow her to the stake.
“What are we going to do about it?” said that detestable practical Mats.
“We are going to form a society for saving our souls and the world,” said Paula. “I’ve thought it all out. We’ll call ourselves the Lighted Lamps. Don’t you think that’s a splendid name? I’ll be head of it and you must do just as I tell you. We will live such beautiful lives that everybody will admire us and want to join us. We will be just as good every day as we are on Sunday” — here Mats emitted a “marvellous grisly groan”—”but we will be very exclusive. No one can come in who is not ready to be a martyr.”
“But what are we to do?” said Mats with a sigh. She must go where Marigold went, but her chubby personality had no heritage of martyrdom.
Paula allowed herself to sit down.
“First, we must never eat anything more than is absolutely necessary. No meat — no pudding — no cake—”
“Oh, I have to eat some,” cried Marigold sorrowfully. “Aunty would think I was sick or something and send me home.”
“Well, then, there must be no second helpings,” said Paula inexorably. They pledged themselves — Marigold thinking guiltily of the delicious little strawberry shortcakes Aunt Anne had said she was going to make for dinner.
“We must never read or tell anything that isn’t strictly true. Never pretend anything” — Marigold gave a gasp but recovered herself gallantly—”never wear any jewelry — and never play silly games.”
“Can’t we play at all?” implored Mats.
“Play. In a world where we must prepare for eternity? You can play if you like but I shall not.”
“What will we do if we can’t play?” asked Marigold humbly.
“Work. The world is full of work waiting to be done.”
“I always help Aunt Anne every way I can. But when I get through what can I do?”
“Meditate. But we’ll find lots to do when we get going. Now, Mats, if you’re coming in on this, come with all your soul. You must sacrifice. You have to be miserable or you can’t be good. You mustn’t forget for one moment that you’re a sinner. You can’t be both religious and happy in this world of sin and woe. We must live up to our name. And every time our light goes out we must do penance.”
“How?” Mats again.
“Oh, lots of ways. I put some burrs next my skin yesterday because I only wanted a second helping at dinner. And kneel on peas. And fast. I fast often — and do you know, girls, when I fast I hear voices calling me by name.” Paula’s face took on a strange, unearthly radiance that completed Marigold’s subjugation. “And I know it is angels calling me to my life’s work — singling me out — setting me apart.”
Mats had a hazy idea that it was going to be pretty hard to live up to Paula. But she meant to get to the bottom of things. “You’ve told us what we mustn’t do. Now tell us what we must do.”
“We must visit sick people—”
“I hate sick people,” muttered Mats rebelliously, while Marigold thought with a shudder of her experience with Mrs. Delagarde. Paula, she felt, would not have been a bit frightened of Mrs. Delagarde.
“And read the Bible every day and say our prayers night and morning—”
“I don’t see any use in saying prayers in the morning. I ain’t scared in daytime,” protested Mats.
Paula tried to ignore her and addressed herself to Marigold — who, as she felt instinctively, was a devotee of promise. You could never make anything of Mats — always chattering like a silly little parrot — but this new girl was after her own heart.
“We must hand out tracts — Father has stacks of them — and ask people if they’re Christians — you can ask your father’s hired man, Mats.”
“He’d leave if I did and Father’d kill me,” said Mats uncomfortably.
“Well, we’re organised,” said Paula. “Repeat after me, ‘Lighted lamps we are and lighted lamps we will be as long as grass grows and water runs.’”
“Ow,” whimpered Mats. But she repeated the vow glibly, comforted by recollections of other vows with the same implication of eternity which had proved to be of time when Paula grew tired of them.
“And now,” concluded Paula, “I’ll lead in prayer” — which she did, so beautifully and fervently, with her pale hands clasped and her eyes fixed on the sky, that Marigold’s soul was uplifted and even Mats was impressed.
“There may be some fun in this after all,” she reflected. “But I wish Paula would repent in winter. That’s the best time for repenting.”
4
As the days went on, Mats grimly concluded that there wasn’t much fun in it. She was with them but not of them. As she had foreseen, it was very hard to live up to Paula. At least, for her, Marigold didn’t seem to find it hard. Marigold, who went about with stars in her eyes, so unnaturally good that Aunt Anne was worried. Good on the outside, at least. Marigold knew she was full of sin inside because Paula told her so. Marigold was by now wholly in the power of this pale brown girl and thought her the most wonderful saintly creature that ever lived. She grieved constantly because she fell so far short of her. Paula fasted so much — as that wan, rapt face and those purple-ringed eyes testified eloquently. Marigold couldn’t fast because of unsympathetic relatives. She could only refuse second helpings and “piec
es” and writhe in bitterness when she heard Paula say loftily,
“I haven’t touched a morsel of food since yesterday morning.”
Neither could she hand out little time-yellowed tracts at church as Paula did every Sunday and as Mats flatly refused to do at all.
“You can amuse yourselves by being miserable if you want to,” said Uncle Charlie, “but I’m not going to have you making a nuisance of yourself as Paula Pengelly does.”
Paula a nuisance! That self-sacrificing little saint who was positively happy in wearing a shabby, faded dress to church and who knew whole chapters of the Bible by heart. Not the int’resting ones, either, but the — the — dull ones like those in Numbers and Leviticus. Who wouldn’t play games — not even jackstones, though she was crazy about them — because it was wrong. Who cried all night about her sins, when she, Marigold, could only squeeze out a few tears and then fall ignominiously asleep. Who never laughed — there was no place in religion for laughter, not even with an Uncle Charlie forever saying things that nearly made you die. Who never did anything she liked to do because if you liked a thing it was a sure sign it was wrong. Marigold was furious with Uncle Charlie.
“It’s lovely here at Aunt Anne’s,” she sighed. “But it’s so hard to be religious. I suppose it’s easier at Paula’s. Her father doesn’t hinder her.”
Marigold knew Paula’s father by this time. She had been to have tea with Paula and stay all night with her — a great privilege which Aunt Anne did not properly appreciate.
Paula lived in a little grey house on the other side of the pond. A tired little house that looked as if it were on the point of lying down. Inside, the blinds were very crooked and the furniture very dusty. There was nothing for supper but nuts, apples, brown bread and some stale, sweet crackers. But that did not matter, for Marigold could not have eaten anyhow, she was in such awe of Mr. Pengelly — a tall old man with long grey hair, a wonderful grey beard, a great hawk nose and eyes that shone in his lined face like a cat’s in the dark. He never spoke a word to her or any one. Paula told her it was because he had one of vows of silence on.
“Sometimes he never says a word for a whole week,” said Paula proudly. “He is such a good man. Once Aunt Em made a pudding for dinner Christmas — a little pudding — and Father grabbed it from the pot and hurled it out of doors. But even he isn’t as good as Great-Uncle Josiah was. He let his nails grow till they were as long as birds’ claws, just to please God.”
Marigold couldn’t help wondering what particular pleasure Uncle Josiah’s nails would give God, but she crushed back the thought rigidly as a sin.
They slept in a stuffy little hall-bedroom that had shabby, faded pink curtains and a broken pane, and was lighted by a lamp that seemed never to have been cleaned.
The head of the funny little old wooden bedstead was just against the rattling window.
“The snow drifts in on my pillow in winter,” said Paula, the fires of martyrdom burning in her eyes as she knelt on peas to say her prayers.
The rain beat against the panes. Marigold half wished she were back in the tower room at Broad Acres. This was not one of the nights Paula lay awake to worry over her sins. She slept like a log. She snored. Marigold did the lying-awake.
Breakfast. No salt in the porridge. Paula had burned the toast. The tablecloth was dirty. And Marigold had a chipped cup. Then she drank avidly. This was certainly a good chance to do something for penance. Penance for certain thoughts she had been thinking. But not about Paula. Paula, in spite of the snores, still shone amid all her shabby surroundings like a star far above the soil and mist of earth — a star for worship and reverence. Marigold worshipped and reverenced. She was strangely happy in all her renunciations and denials. She would give up anything rather than face Paula’s scornful smile. It was all the reward she wanted when Paula said graciously, as a priestess might stoop to approve the acolyte,
“I knew, as soon as I saw you, that you were One of Us.”
Aunt Anne and Uncle Charlie couldn’t understand it.
“That Pengelly imp seems to have a power to bewitch the other girls,” grumbled Uncle Charlie. “Marigold is absolutely infatuated with her and her kididoes. But there’s one thing — if this keeps on after she goes home, old Madam Lesley will make short work of it.”
5
Marigold spent a considerable part of her time doing penance in various small ways for various small misdemeanours. It was not always easy to find a penance to do — something Aunt Anne would let you do. No fasting or kneeling on peas for Aunt Anne. And even when Marigold and Paula between them — Mats bluntly declined to have anything to do with penances — hit on a workable penance, Marigold was apt to discover that she rather liked it — it was int’resting — and Paula had said,
“Just as soon as you like doing a thing it isn’t penance of course.”
But one “penance” was an experience that always stood out clearly in Marigold’s memory. At its first conception it looked like a real penance. She had fallen from grace terribly — she and Mats, if Mats could ever have been considered in a state of grace by Paula’s standards. She had been invited to supper at Mats’s; and she couldn’t resist that supper.
Mats’s mother was a notable cook and she had four different kinds of cake. And, alas, every one was a kind of which Marigold was particularly fond. Banana cake with whipped cream — strawberry shortcake — date layer-cake — jelly-roll cake. Marigold took a piece of each and two pieces of the shortcake. She knew she was doing wrong — from Mother’s point of view as well as Paula’s; but with Mats gobbling industriously by her side and Mats’s mother saying reproachfully,
“You haven’t eaten anything, child,”
What was one to do?
And after supper she and Mats had got a big fashion-book and picked out the dresses they’d have when they grew up; and filled their cup of iniquity to overflowing by “boxing” the bed of the hired man in the kitchen loft. At that, he probably slept better than Marigold, who was sick all night and had horrible dreams. Which might have been thought a sufficient penance. But Paula had a different opinion.
Marigold’s conscience gave her no rest until she had confessed everything to Paula.
“You are a Pharisee,” said Paula sorrowfully.
“Oh, I’m not,” wailed Marigold. “It was just—”
Then she stopped. No, she was not going to say,
“Mats and her mother just made me eat.”
That wasn’t altogether true. She had been very willing to eat and she must bear her own iniquities. But had she lost caste forever in Paula’s eyes? Would she no longer be considered One of Us?
“You’ve been very wicked,” said Paula. “Your lamp has almost gone out and you must do a specially hard penance to atone.”
Marigold sighed with relief. So she was not to be cast off. Of course she would do a penance. But what penance — at once severe enough and practicable. Paula thought of it.
“You’re afraid of being alone in the dark. Sleep out all night on the roof of the veranda. That will be a real penance.”
It certainly would. How real, Marigold knew too well. It was true that she was afraid of being alone in the dark. She was never afraid in the dark if any one was with her, but to be alone in it was terrible. She was becoming very ashamed of this terror. Grandmother said severely that a girl of eleven should not be such a baby and Marigold was sure that Old Grandmother would have scorned her for a coward. But so far she had not been able to conquer her dread of it. And the thought of spending the night alone on the veranda roof appalled her. Nevertheless she agreed to do it.
It was easy enough from one point of view. There was a door in her little tower-room opening on the veranda roof and there was a little iron bedstead on it. All Marigold had to do was to slip out of bed as soon as everybody was asleep and drag her bedclothes and mattress out.
She did it — in a cold perspiration — and crept into bed trembling from head to foot.
“I won’t be scared of you,” she gasped gallantly to the night.
But she was. She felt all the primitive, unreasoning fear known to the childhood of the race. The awe of the dark and the shadowy — the shrinking from some unseen menace lurking in the gloom. The night seemed creeping down through the spruce wood behind the house like a living — but not human — thing to pounce on her. Darkness all about her — around — above — below. And in that darkness — what?
She wanted to cover up her head but she would not. That would be shirking part of the penance. She lay there and looked up at the sky — that terrible ocean of stars which Uncle Klon had told her were suns, millions of millions of millions of miles away. There did not seem to be a sound in the whole earth. It was waiting — waiting — for what? Suppose every one in the world was dead! Suppose she was the only person left alive in that terrible silence!
Then — she could not have told whether it was hours or minutes later — something changed. All at once. She was no longer frightened. She sat up and looked about her. On a world of velvet and shadow and stars. The boughs of the spruces tossed in a sudden wind against the sky. The gulf waters were silver under the rising moon. The trees were whispering in the garden like old friends. The fern scents of a warm summer night drifted down from the hill.
“Why — I like the dark,” Marigold whispered to herself. “It’s nice — and kind — and friendly. I never thought it could be so beautiful.”
She stretched out her arms to it. It seemed a Presence, hovering, loving, enfolding. She lay down again in its shadow and surrendered herself utterly to its charm, letting her thoughts run out into it far beyond the Milky Way. She did not want to sleep — but after a time she slept. And wakened in the pale, windless morning just as a new dawn came creeping across Broad Acres. The dreamy dunes along the shore were lilac and blue and gold. Above her were high and lovely clouds just touched by sunrise. Below in the garden the dews were silver in the hearts of unblown roses. Uncle Charlie’s sheep in the brook pasture looked amazingly white and pearly and plump in the misty morning light. The world had a look Marigold had never seen it wear before — an expectant, untouched look as if it were a morning in Eden. She sighed with delight. A mystic happiness possessed her.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 474
