The Complete Works of L M Montgomery, page 480
Marigold had a deadly horror of frogs but she never let Budge know it, and she compelled herself to carry a dead snake — on a stick — to win his admiration. She also brought herself to say “Holy cats,” but try as she would she could never compass a “darn,” which was just as well. Because in his heart Budge did not care for girls who said “darn.”
She was never able to learn to whistle on a blade of grass, as he did. But she could do one thing he couldn’t do — make the dearest pudding-bags out of the fat live-forever leaves. Budge tried and tried but his thumb pressure was always too heavy, so the balance of respect was kept true. And when Budge sat down on a hot oven door one day, in trousers that needed a patch, Marigold never even asked him how his burns were getting on. By such tact is friendship preserved.
Budge patted Marigold’s kitten, Pops, and Marigold loved his dog, Dix. But Sylvia she could not yet share with him. Budge had somehow got the idea that Marigold had some pet mystery connected with the hill of spruce, and sometimes teased her to tell him what it was. But Marigold always refused. Not yet — not yet. She had never, in spite of fleeting temptation, told any of her playmates about Sylvia — not even Bernice. Sylvia was so much her own. Although — Marigold owned it to herself occasionally with a sorrowful sigh — somehow Sylvia wasn’t just the same. Not so vivid — so living — so real. The change had come about so slowly that Marigold did not yet realise how far her jolly chumship with Budge had replaced that goblin-comradeship of her lonely years. She clung to Sylvia, remembering what Aunt Marigold had said to her one evening as they sat in the orchard.
“Keep your dream, little Marigold, as long as you can. A dream is an immortal thing. Time cannot kill it or age wither it. You may tire of reality but never of dreams.”
“It hurts — to wake up, though,” said Marigold timidly. “When I come back through the Green Gate I always feel that it’s just terrible to think there really isn’t any Sylvia — that she’s just something I’ve dreamed.”
“The dreamer’s joy is worth the dreamer’s pain,” said Aunt Marigold, knowing that since Marigold had begun to think of Sylvia as a dream the sad awakening was near.
So, almost every day, some time of it, Marigold slipped through The Magic Door and the Green Gate and summoned Sylvia. Sylvia always came — still. But there was a difference.
Marigold would have told Budge about Sylvia if she could have been sure how he would take her. Marigold knew of a side of his nature which made her think he might understand Sylvia. Rarely, Budge gave her glimpses of this side. When they grew tired of prowling and pirating and sat on the wharf watching the ghostly sails of outgoing ships in the twilight, Budge would recite to her shyly the queer little verses of poetry he sometimes made up. Marigold thought they were wonderful. Budge understood, too, the secret thrill that came when you opened a new book. And he was a crackerjack at yarns. She liked his scarlet boy-stories better than her rose-pink and moon-blue girl-fancies. That one of the wolf-skin rug on the Guest parlour floor coming alive and prowling at night with burning eyes. Marigold couldn’t sleep when she went to bed for the delicious horror of it. Was it coming across the road now — snuffing through the garden — padding up the stairs? Marigold screamed aloud and Mother came in and said she’d had a nightmare.
2
And then. The Austins bought the old Burnaby place and moved in. Tad Austin was a boy of Budge’s age. And Marigold found herself deserted.
“’Tis an old tale and often told.”
Tad Austin’s parents, for some inscrutable reason, had seen fit to christen him Romney, but he never got anything but Tad. He was really not a bad-looking boy, with a chubby, agreeable brown face, although Marigold, who naturally could see nothing attractive about him, thought that his round, prominent blue eyes looked absurdly like the fat blue plums on the tree by the apple-barn.
The world was suddenly a cold, lonely, empty place for our poor Marigold. Always hitherto she had taken her troubles to her mother. But she couldn’t take this — she couldn’t. Not even Mother could understand. Certainly Grandmother couldn’t. Grandmother, who, passing Marigold sitting disconsolately on the twilight steps, had remarked humorously,
“‘Don’t sigh but send
And if he doesn’t come let him be hanged.’”
Send, indeed. Marigold would have died the death before she would have made the slightest effort to get Budge back. The cats could have him. She got an enormous satisfaction out of picturing to herself how haughty and implacable she would be if he did come back. At least this was how she felt about it at first.
“Perhaps he’ll be sorry when I’m dead,” thought Marigold darkly. But she would show Budge — show everybody — she didn’t care. She went and made candy and sang like a lark.
But there was nobody to share the candy with when it was made. She gave Lazarre the most of it to take to his children.
Life was a howling wilderness for Marigold the next few weeks. It seemed to her that Budge and Tad literally flaunted their intimacy and fun in her face — though the shameful truth was that they never thought about her at all. They got up a show and all the boys of Harmony could see it for a cent, but no girls. Oh, it was mean!
Budge and Tad went fishing up the brooks. Budge and Tad dug for pirate gold. Budge and Tad had a smuggler’s rendezvous in the cave Marigold had discovered on the harbour shore. Budge and Tad had the kitten-hunt in the Guest barn which Marigold and Budge had planned to have in the fulness of time when there should be kittens to hunt.
This was the last straw that broke Marigold’s pride. She would so have loved a kitten-hunt with Budge in the great dusky hay-scented old barn.
She must get Budge back. She must. Existence was quite impossible without him. But how? What could she do? Marigold knew she must not show her hand too plainly. Instinct told her that. Besides she had a dim old memory of something Old Grandmother had said long, long ago.
“If you run after a man he’ll run away. It’s instinct. We have to run when anything chases us.”
Wherefore she, Marigold, would not run after Budge. Was there any other way?
“I wonder if it would do any good to pray about it,” she thought. Then she decided she couldn’t try it anyway.
“I don’t want him to come back because God made him come. I want him to come back because he wants to.”
Like an inspiration came the thought of Sylvia. She would tell him about Sylvia. He had always wanted to know about Sylvia. He might come back then.
It was a fortunate coincidence that Salome asked her to go over to the Guest place on an errand that very afternoon. Budge was sitting on the side door-steps packing fish-worms in a tin can. He grinned at her cheerfully and absently. It had never occurred to Budge that he had treated Marigold shamelessly. She had simply — for the time — ceased to count.
“I have something to tell you,” whispered Marigold.
“What is it?” said Budge indifferently.
Marigold sat down beside him and told him all about Sylvia at last. About The Magic Door and the Green Gate and the Land of Butterflies and The Rhyme. She had a curious unpleasant sense of loss and disloyalty as she told it. As if she were losing something that was very precious.
And she had her reward.
“Aw, that sounds awful silly,” said Budge.
Marigold went away without another word. She would never speak to Budge Guest again. She would never have anything to do with any boy again. All tarred with the same brush, as Lazarre said. She would go back to Sylvia — darling, neglected Sylvia. Through The Magic Door — up the slope of fern — through the Green Gate. Then The Rhyme.
And no Sylvia!
Marigold stared helplessly around her with a quivering lip. No Sylvia. Sylvia would not come. Would never come again. Marigold felt this as we feel certain things irrevocably. Was it because she had told Budge about her? Or was it because she had suddenly grown too old and wise for fairyland. Were the “ivory gates and golden” of which Mother sometimes sang, closed behind her forever? Marigold flung herself down among the ferns in the bitterest tears she had ever shed — ever would shed, perhaps. Her lovely dream was gone. Who of us is there who has not lost one?
3
It was the next day Budge came back — an indignant Budge, avid to pour out his wrongs to somebody. And that somebody was the disdained and disdainful Marigold, who had vowed afresh the night before that if Budge Guest ever spoke to her again she would treat him with such scorn and contempt that even his thick hide would feel it.
Budge and Tad had fought because their dogs had fought.
“My dog won,” gulped Budge. “And Tad got mad. He said Dix was only a mongrel cur.”
“He’s jealous,” said Marigold comfortingly. “And he has an awful temper. I heard that long ago from a girl who knew him well.”
“I dared him to fight me, then — and he said he wouldn’t fight me because I was such a sissy.”
“He wouldn’t fight you because he knew he’d get licked even worse than his dog did,” said Marigold, oh, so scornfully. But the scorn was all for Tad.
“He wouldn’t fight — but he kept on saying mean things. He said I wore a nightcap. Well, I did once, years ago — when I was little but—”
“Everybody wears nightcaps when they’re little,” said Marigold.
“And he said that I was a coward and that I wouldn’t walk through the graveyard at night.”
“Let’s go through it to-night and show him,” said Marigold eagerly.
“Not to-night,” said Budge hastily. “There’s a heavy dew. You’d get wet.”
Happiness flowed through Marigold like a wave. Budge was thinking of her welfare. At least, so she believed.
“He said his grandfather had whiskers and mine hadn’t. Should a grandfather have whiskers?”
“It’s ever so much more aristocratic not to have them,” said Marigold with finality.
“And he said I wasn’t tattooed and couldn’t stand tattooing. He’s always been so conceited about that snake his sailor-uncle tattooed on his arm.”
“What if he is tattooed?” Marigold wanted to know. She recalled what Grandmother had said about that tattooed snake. “It’s a barbaric disfigurement. Didn’t you say anything to him?”
Budge gulped.
“Everything I said he said it over again and laughed.”
“There’s something so insulting about that,” agreed Marigold.
“And he called me a devilish pup.”
“I wouldn’t mind being called a devilish pup,” said Marigold, who thought it sounded quite dashing and romantic.
But there was something yet worse to be told.
“He — said — I was unladylike.”
This was a bit of a poser for Marigold. It would never do to imply that Budge was ladylike.
“Why didn’t you tell him that he’s pop-eyed and that he eats like a rhinoceros?” she inquired calmly.
Budge was at the end of his list of grievances. His anger was ebbing and he had a horrible feeling that he was going to — cry. And back of that a delicious feeling that even if he did Marigold would understand and not despise him. What a brick of a girl she was! Worth a million Tad Austins.
As a matter of fact Budge got off without crying but he never forgot that feeling.
“I’m never going to have anything to do with him again,” he said darkly. “Say, do you want one of them grey kittens? If you do I’ll bring it over to-morrow.”
“Oh, do,” said Marigold. “The Witch’s are all black this summer.”
They sat there for an hour eating nut-sweet apples, entirely satisfied with themselves. To Marigold the tiny roses on the bush by the steps seemed like the notes or echoes of the little song that was singing itself in her heart. All that had once made magic made it again. And she asked Budge if he had told Tad about Sylvia.
“Of course not. That’s your secret,” said Budge, grandly. “And he doesn’t know about the password and the secret sign either. That’s our secret.”
When Budge went home it was agreed that he should bring the kitten the next afternoon and that they should go on a quest for the Holy Grail up among the spruces.
“I’ll never forget to-night,” said Marigold. Some lost ecstasy had returned to life.
4
But the next morning it seemed as if the night before had never been. When Marigold had sprung eagerly out of her blue-and-white bed, slipped into her clothes and run liltingly down to the front door — what did she see?
Budge and Tad walking amiably down the road with fishing-poles and worm-cans, while two dogs trotted behind in entire amity.
Marigold stood rigid. She made no response when Budge waved his pole gaily at her and shouted hello. Her heart, so full of joy a moment ago, was lead, heavy and cold.
That was a doleful forenoon. Her new dress of peach silk came home but Marigold was not interested in it. A maiden forsaken and grieved in spirit has no vanity.
But just let Budge Guest come to her again for comfort!
Budge came that afternoon but not in search of comfort. He was cheerful and grinful and he brought an adorable clover-scented kitten with a new pattern of stripes. But Marigold was cold and distant. Very.
“What’s biting you?” asked Budge.
“Nothing,” said Marigold.
“Look here,” expostulated Budge, “I came over to go Grailing with you. But if you don’t want to go just say so. Tad wants me to go to the harbour mouth.”
For a moment, pride and — something else — struggled fiercely together in Marigold’s heart. Something else won.
“Of course I want to go Grail-hunting,” she said.
They did not find the Grail but they found one of Grandmother’s precious pink-lustre cups which had been lost for two years, ever since a certain Lesley Reunion Picnic had been held on the spruce hill. Found it safe and unharmed in a crevice of the stone dyke. And Grandmother was so pleased that she gave them a whole plateful of hop-and-go-fetch-its to eat — which was symbolic. She would not have given them hop-and-go-fetch-its if it had really been the Grail they found.
5
Budge went home. He had a tryst with Tad for the evening. Marigold sat down on the veranda steps. The little streak of yellow sky above the dark hills over the harbour was very lonely. The sound of breakers tumbling on the far away outer shore was very lonely. She was very lonely — in spite of her jolly afternoon with Budge.
Aunt Marigold coming out, noted Marigold’s face and sat down beside her. Aunt Marigold, who had never had any children of her own, knew more mothercraft than many women who had. She had not only the seeing eye but the understanding heart as well. In a short time she had the whole story. If she smiled over it Marigold did not see it.
“You must not expect to have Budge wholly to yourself, dear, as you had Sylvia. Our earthly house of love has many mansions and many tenants. Budge will be always coming back to you. He finds something in your companionship Tad can’t give him. He’ll come for it, never fear. But you must share him with others. We — women — must always share.”
Marigold sat awhile longer after Aunt Marigold had gone away. But she was no longer unhappy. A dreamy smile lingered on her lips. The new kitten purred on her lap. The twilight wrapped her round. Robber winds came down out of the cloud of spruce to rifle spices from the flower-beds in the orchard. There was gold of her namesake flowers all along the dusk of the walk. The stars twinkled through the fir-trees and right and left the harbour range-lights shone like great earth stars. Presently a moon rose and there was a sparkling trail over the harbour like a lady’s silken dress.
Yes, she must share Budge. The old magic was gone forever — gone with Sylvia and the Hidden Land and all the dear, sweet fading dreams of childhood. But after all there were compensations. For one thing, she could be as big a coward as she wanted to be. No more hunting snakes and chivying frogs. No more pretending to like horrible things that squirmed. She was no longer a boy’s rival. She stood on her own ground.
“And I’ll always be here for him to come back to,” she thought.
THE END
A TANGLED WEB
Pigeonholed as a writer for young people, late in her career L.M. Montgomery still wanted to write books with literary merit for adults. A Tangled Web, published by McClelland & Stewart in 1931, was one such effort. A comic novel, A Tangled Web features members of a large Prince Edward Island family, the Darks and Penhallows, fighting over a family heirloom, an antique jug, left by Aunt Becky Dark. At Aunt Becky’s death bed she announces plans for disposition of the jug in one year’s time. Over the course of that year, several family members change or reform their lives in order to live up to expectations and win the jug.
The novel winds through a number of interconnected stories, allowing room for eccentric characters, more than one romance, and much humor. A Tangled Web appeared in England as Aunt Becky Began It. Montgomery recycled a piece of an earlier story, “A House Divided Against Itself,” published by Canadian Home Journal in 1930, using the quarrel over a statue by Big George and Little George, changing the names to Big Sam and Little Sam. Another thread in the novel resembles a much earlier story about the Penhallow family, “The Winning of Lucinda,” published in The Chronicles of Avonlea (1912).
A first edition copy of A Tangled Web
CONTENTS
Aunt Becky’s Levee
Wheels within Wheels
Midsummer Madness
The Moving Finger
Blindly Wise
Finally, Brethren
A British edition of A Tangled Web, re-titled Aunt Becky Began It
Aunt Becky’s Levee
A dozen stories have been told about the old Dark jug. This is the true one.
Several things happened in the Dark and Penhallow clan because of it. Several other things did not happen. As Uncle Pippin said, this may have been Providence or it may have been the devil that certainly possessed the jug. At any rate, had it not been for the jug, Peter Penhallow might to-day have been photographing lions alone in African jungles, and Big Sam Dark would, in all probability, never have learned to appreciate the beauty of the unclothed female form. As for Dandy Dark and Penny Dark, they have never ceased to congratulate themselves that they got out of the affair with whole hides.
