The Complete Works of L M Montgomery, page 467
Of course fun was all right. But Gwennie laughed at so many things Marigold had been taught to hold sacred, and giggled when she should be reverent. It was awful to go to church with her. She said such funny things about everybody and it was so wicked to laugh in church, even silently. Yet laugh Marigold sometimes had to till the pew shook and Grandmother glared at her.
But Marigold would not allow Gwennie to baptise the kittens. Gwen thought it would be “such fun” and had the bowl of water and everything ready. She was to be the minister and Marigold was to hold the kittens.
But Marigold had put her foot down firmly. No kittens were going to be baptised and that was that.
“Grandmother wouldn’t allow it,” said Marigold.
“I don’t care a hang for Grandmother,” said Gwennie.
“I do.”
“You’re just afraid of her,” said Gwennie contemptuously. “Do have some spunk.”
“I’ve lots of spunk,” retorted Marigold. “And it isn’t because I’m afraid of her that I won’t have the kittens baptised. It just isn’t right.”
“Do you know,” said Gwennie, “what I do at home when Father or Mother won’t let me do things. I just sit down and yell at the top of my voice till they give in.”
“You couldn’t yell Grandmother out,” said Marigold proudly.
Gwennie sulked all the evening and Marigold felt badly because she really liked Gwennie very much. But there were some things that simply were not done and baptising kittens was one of them. Gwennie announced in the morning that she would forgive Marigold.
“I don’t want to be forgiven. I haven’t done anything wrong,” retorted Marigold. “I won’t be forgiven.”
“I will forgive you. You can’t prevent me,” said Gwennie virtuously. “And now let’s arrange for something different to happen to-day. I’m tired of everything we’ve been doing. Look here, was there ever a day in your life you did everything you wanted to?”
Marigold reflected. “No.”
“Well, let’s do everything we want to to-day. Every single thing.”
“Everything you want or everything I want?” queried Marigold significantly.
“Everything I want,” declared Gwennie. “I’m the visitor, so you ought to let me do as I want. Now, come on, don’t be a ‘fraid-cat. I won’t ask you to baptise kittens. We’ll leave the holy things out since you’re so squeamish. I’ll tell you what I am going to do. I’m dying to taste some of that blueberry wine. I asked your grandmother yesterday for some but she said it wasn’t good for little girls. That’s all in my eye. I’m just going to get a bottle out right now and open it. We’ll take a glass apiece and put the bottle back. Nobody’ll ever know.”
Marigold knew quite well this wasn’t right. But it was a different kind of wrongness from the kitten-project. And she knew that Gwennie would do it whether it was right or not; and Marigold had a secret hankering to see what blueberry wine was like. They would never give her any of it, which she thought very mean. Grandmother’s blueberry wine was famous, and when evening callers came they were always treated to blueberry wine with their cake.
Grandmother and Mother and Salome were all far up in the orchard picking the August apples. It was a good chance and, as Gwennie said, likely nobody would miss the two glassfuls if they put the bottle away back on the pantry shelf in the dark corner.
The dining-room was cool and shadowy. It had been newly papered in the spring, and Mother had just put up the new cream net curtains that waved softly in the August breezes. Grandmother’s beautiful bluebird centrepiece, which Aunt Dorothy had sent her all the way from Vancouver, was on the table under the bowl of purple delphiniums. Hanging over a chair was Salome’s freshly laundered blue and white print dress.
Marigold lingered to whisper something to the delphiniums, while Gwennie popped into the pantry and came out with a bottle.
“The cork is wired down,” she said. “I’ll have to run out to the apple-barn and get the pliers. You wait here and if you hear any one coming pop the bottle back into the pantry.”
Nobody came and Marigold watched the bottle with its beautiful purplish-red glow. At last she was going to know what blueberry wine was like. It was really rather jolly to have some one round who dared fly in Grandmother’s face.
Gwennie saw nobody but Lazarre on her trip to the apple-barn. Lazarre, whose opinion of Gwennie’s ancestry was sulphurous, knew something was in the wind.
“Dat kid she always look special lak de angel w’en she plannin’ some devil-work,” he muttered. But he said nothing. If three women couldn’t look after her it was none of his business.
“I’ve brought a corkscrew, too,” said Gwennie, twisting the wire deftly around with the pliers.
As it happened, there was no need of the corkscrew. None whatever.
Gwennie and Marigold hardly knew what had happened. There had been a noise like a gun-shot — and they were standing in the middle of the dining-room looking wildly at each other. There was not much blueberry wine left in that bottle. The rest of it was on the ceiling — on the walls — on the new curtains — on Salome’s dress — on the blue bird centrepiece — on Gwennie’s face — on Marigold’s pretty pink linen dress! Gwennie had learned something she had never known before about blueberry wine. And if thrills were what she was after, she had had enough in one moment to last several weeks.
For an instant she stood in dismay. Then she seized Marigold’s hand. “Come quick,” she hissed, “get that dress off — get something on — hurry.”
Marigold let herself be whisked upstairs. What dreadful thing had happened? Blueberry stains never came out, she had heard Salome say. But Gwennie gave her no time to think. The stained dress was dragged off and thrown into the closet — Marigold’s old tan one was thrown over her head — Gwennie wiped the blueberry wine off her face with one of Mother’s towels. There were some spots on her dress, too, but that did not matter.
“Come,” she said imperiously, snatching Marigold’s hand.
“Where are we going?” gasped Marigold as they tore down the road.
“Anywhere. We’ve got to vamoose until they get over that dining-room. They’d kill us if they saw us when they see it. We’ll stay away till evening. Their fit will be over by then and maybe we’ll get off with whole hides. But I’d like to be a fly on the ceiling when Grandmother sees that room.”
“We can’t stay away all day. We’ve nothing to eat,” groaned Marigold.
“We’ll eat berries and roots — and things,” said Gwennie. “We’ll be Gipsies and live in the woods. Come to think of it, it will be fun.”
“Will you take a drive,” said a voice above them.
It was Mr. Abel Derusha, the Weed Man, on his double-seated wagon, bareheaded as always, with his dog Buttons beside him!
2
The Weed Man was one of the few romantic personages the country around the harbour could boast. He lived somewhere up at the Head but was well known all over the surrounding communities — at least people thought they knew him well, whereas perhaps nobody really knew him at all.
In his youth Abel Derusha had gone to college and studied for the ministry. Then that was given up. There was a heresy hunt and the result was that Abel Derusha came home, lived at the Head with his old-maid sister Tabby and set up his weed-wagon. Soon he was known as the “Weed Man.” In summer he drove all over the Island gathering medicinal plants and herbs and selling them and the decoctions he made from them. He made only a pittance by it. But he and Tabby had enough to live on, and Abel Derusha’s weed-fad was little more than an excuse to live in the open. Marigold thought him very “int’resting” and often felt that it would be a delightful thing to drive about with him on his red wagon. She always felt the strange charm of his personality though she knew little of his history — just what she had heard Salome say to Mrs. Kemp one day.
“Abel Derusha always took things easy. Never seemed to worry over trials and disappointments as most folks do. Seems to me that as long as he can wander over the country hunting weeds and talking to that old red dog of his as if it was a human being he don’t care how the world wags on. Didn’t even worry when they put him out of the ministry. Said God was in the woods as well as any church. He favours his mother’s people, the Courteloes. Sort of shiftless and dreamy. All born with hang-nails on their heels. The Derushas were all ashamed of him. ’Tisn’t the way to get on in the world.”
No, good and worthy Salome. It is not the way to get on in your world, but there may be other worlds where getting on is estimated by different standards, and Abel Derusha lived in one of these — a world far beyond the ken of the thrifty Harbour farmers. Marigold knew that world, though she knew it didn’t do to live in it all the time as Abel did. Though you were very happy there. Abel Derusha was the happiest person she knew.
He had a face so short it positively looked square, a long, rippling, silky red beard and an odd, spiky, truculent moustache that didn’t seem to belong to the beard at all. There was no doubt he was ugly, but Marigold had always thought it was a nice kind of ugliness. He had beautiful clear blue eyes that told he had kept the child-heart. The red squirrels would come to him in the woods and he called all the dogs in the country by their first name. When he came to Cloud of Spruce — which he did not always do, being “pernickety” in regard to his ports of call — he sat in his red wagon and talked with Lazarre and Salome and Mother and Grandmother by the hour, if they would linger to talk with him, though he would never enter the house. After he had gone Lazarre would shrug his shoulders and say contemptuously,
“Dat man, he’s crack.” Whereat Salome would inform Lazarre, by way of standing by her race, that Abel Derusha had forgotten more than he, the said Lazarre, ever knew. He had promised once to take Marigold for a drive with him and Marigold hankered after it, though she knew she would never be let go. And now here she and Gwennie were out to do as they liked for a whole day and here was the Weed Man offering them a drive.
“Sure,” said Gwennie promptly. But Marigold, in spite of her secret wishes, hung back.
“Where are you going?”
“Anywhere — anywhere,” said Abel easily. “I’m just poking along to-day — just poking along, thinking how I’d have made the world if I had made it. And if you two small skeesicks want to come along why just come.”
“But they wouldn’t know what had happened to us at home,” said Marigold doubtfully.
“They’ll know what has happened to the dining-room,” giggled Gwen. “Come on now, Marigold. Be a sport.”
“Marigold’s right,” said the Weed Man. “Doesn’t do to worry folks who worry. I never worry myself. Here’s Jim Donkin coming along. I’ll ask him to drop over to Cloud of Spruce and tell the folks you’ve come for a day with me. We’ll get our dinners somewhere along the road and we’ll go home to my place for supper, and I’ll bring you back in the evening. How’s that?”
Nobody but the Weed Man would have proposed such a plan. But Abel didn’t see any reason if the girls wanted a drive why they shouldn’t have it on a day God had made specially for people who wanted to be out. Gwennie had quite made up her mind to go and Marigold couldn’t help thinking it would be very int’resting.
So Jim Donkin was asked to take the word to Cloud of Spruce, and Marigold and Gwennie were in the back seat of the red wagon, amid fragrant bundles of Abel’s harvest, bowling along the road, quite delighted with themselves. Marigold resolved to forget the catastrophe of the blueberry wine. It had been Gwen’s doings, anyway. They wouldn’t kill Gwen because she was a visitor and meanwhile here was a whole golden day, with the very air seeming alive, flung into their laps as a gift. Perhaps Marigold had a spice of Uncle Klon’s wanderlust in her. At any rate the prospect of driving about with the Weed Man filled her with secret delight. She had always known she would like the Weed Man.
“What road are you going to take?” demanded Gwen.
“Whatever road pleases me,” said the Weed Man, looking disdainfully at a car that passed. “Look at that critter insulting the daylight. I’ve no use at all for them. Nor your aeroplanes. If God had meant us to fly He’d have given us wings.”
“Did God mean you to drive this poor old horse when He gave you legs?” said Gwen pertly.
“Yes, when He gave him four legs to my two,” was the retort. Abel was so well pleased with himself that he chuckled for a mile. Then he turned into a red side road, narrow and woodsy, with daisies blowing by the longer fences, little pole-gates under the spruces, stone dykes overgrown with things he loved to rifle, looping brooks and grassy fields girdled by woods. It was all very dear and remote and lovely and the Weed Man told them tales of every kink and turn, talking sometimes like the educated man he really was and sometimes lapsing into the vernacular of his childhood.
There was one lovely, gruesome tale of a hollow where a murdered woman’s body had been found; and at a certain corner of the road a “go-preacher” had been stoned.
“What did they stone him for?” asked Gwen.
“For preaching the truth — or what he believed the truth, anyhow. They always do that if you preach the truth — stone you or crucify you.”
“You meant to be a preacher once yourself, didn’t you?” Gwen was possessed of a questioning devil.
“The preaching was Tabby’s idea. I never wanted to myself — not enough to tell lies for it anyhow. See that house in the hollow. There was a man lived there who used to say his prayers every morning and then get up and kick his wife.”
“Why did he kick her?”
“Ah, that’s the point, now. Nobody ever knew. Mebbe ’twas just his way of saying ‘amen.’”
“He wouldn’t have kicked me twice,” said Gwen.
“I believe you.” The Weed Man grinned at her over his shoulder. “Here’s the old Malloy place. Used to be a leprechaun living there — the Malloys brought him out from Ireland among their bits of furniture, ’twas said. Guess ’twas true. Never heard of any native leprechauns in Prince Edward Island.”
“What is a leprechaun?” asked Marigold who had a thrill at the name.
“A liddle dwarf fairy dressed in red with a peaky cap. If you could see him and keep on seeing him he’d lead you to a pot of buried gold. Jimmy Malloy saw him once but he tuk his eyes off him for a second and the liddle fellow vanished. Howsomever, Jimmy could always wiggle his ears after that. He got that much out of it.”
“What good did wiggling his ears do him?”
“Very few can do it. I can. Look.”
“Oh, will you show me how to do that?” cried Gwennie.
“’Tisn’t an accomplishment — it’s a gift,” said the Weed Man solemnly. “Tom Squirely lives over there. Always bragging he doesn’t owe a cent. Good reason why. Nobody would lend him one.”
“I heard Lazarre say the same thing about you,” said Gwen impudently. “If you live in glass houses you shouldn’t throw stones.”
“Why not now? Somebody’ll be sure to throw a stone at your house whether or no, so you might as well have your fun, too. C. C. Vessey lives on that hill. Not a bad feller — not so mean as his dad. When old Vessey’s wife died she was buried with a little gold brooch unbeknown to him. When he found it out he went one night to the graveyard and opened up the grave and casket to get that brooch. Here, wait you a minute. I’ve got to run in and see Captain Simons for a second. He wanted me to bring him a south-west wind to-day. I have to tell him I couldn’t bring it to-day but I’ll send him one to-morrow.”
“Do you suppose he really sells the winds?” whispered Marigold.
“No,” scornfully. “I see through your Weed Man. His head isn’t screwed on very tight. But he’s good fun and his stories are great. I don’t believe that leprechaun yarn though.”
“Don’t you now?” said the Weed Man, returning creepily from behind, though they had never seen him leave the house, and looking at Gwennie compassionately. “What a lot you’re going to miss if you don’t believe things. Now, I just drive round believing everything and such fun as I have.”
“Lazarre says you’re lazy,” commented Gwen.
“No, no, not lazy. Just contented. I’m the biggest toad in my own puddle, so it don’t worry me none if there’s bigger toads in other puddles. I’m king of myself. Now look-a-here. Suppose we call and see old Granny Phin. I haven’t seen her for a long while. And maybe she’ll let Lily give us a bite of dinner.”
Gwen and Marigold surveyed rather dubiously the little house before which the Weed Man was stopping. It was a tumbledown little place with too many brown paper windowpanes. The gate hung by one hinge, the yard was overgrown with Scotch thistle and tansy, and even at a distance the old woman who sat on the crazy veranda did not seem attractive.
“I don’t like the look of the place much,” whispered Gwen. “Hope we don’t catch the itch.”
“What is that?”
“Marigold, don’t you know anything?”
Marigold thought gloatingly of certain things she did know — lovely things — things Gwennie never would or could know. But she only said,
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Then pray heaven you never do know,” said Gwen importantly. “I know. Caught it from a kid going to school who lived in just such a place as this. Ugh! Lard and sulphur till you could die.”
“Come on, now, and don’t you be whispering to each other,” said the Weed Man. “Granny Phin won’t like that. You don’t want to get on the rough side of her tongue. She’s eighty-seven years old, but she’s every inch alive.”
3
