“Surely no one will come today,” moaned Mother, equally wretched. Really, it was a most inconvenient time for Great-Uncle to die.
“Don’t forget to feed the cats,” Grandmother told Marigold. “And mind you don’t go wandering in Mr. Donkin’s hill pasture. He’s turned his ox in there.”
“That’s not his ox,” said Marigold. “That’s his old red bull.”
Grandmother would have died before she would have said the word “bull” aloud. She drove away with Uncle Jack’s Jim, sadly wondering what the young people of this generation were coming to. Apart from that she did not worry over leaving Marigold alone. Marigold was eleven now and tall for her age. One year she had been measured by the rose-bush—the next by the blue-bells. This year she was as tall as the phlox.
She liked being alone very well once in a while. It was quite important being in charge of Cloud of Spruce. She swept the kitchen, and got dinner for herself and Lazarre; she fed the cats and washed the dishes and wrote a letter to Paula.
Then the end of the world came. A car stopped at the gate; seven people descended therefrom and marched in past the platoons of hollyhocks with the air of people coming to stay. Marigold, staring aghast through the window, recognized them. She had met them all two weeks ago at a clan-funeral, where Grandmother had proffered them all a warm invitation to Cloud of Spruce. Second-Cousin Marcus Carter, his wife and son and daughter from Los Angeles; Second-Cousin Olivia Peake from Vancouver; and Third-Cousin Dr. Palmer of Knox College, Toronto, with his wife.
And there was no cake at Cloud of Spruce!
Marigold accepted the situation. In that moment she had decided what she would do.
As graciously as Mother herself could have done, she welcomed the guests at the door.
“Aunt Marian and Lorraine away? Then I don’t suppose we’ll stay,” exclaimed Cousin Marcella Carter, who had a long thin face, a long thin nose, and a long thin mouth.
“You must stay for supper of course,” said Marigold resolutely.
“Have you got anything good for us to eat?” asked Cousin Marcus with a chuckle. He had a square face with a spiky mustache and bristly white eyebrows. Marigold thought she did not like him and was glad she did not have to call him “uncle.”
“I know the Cloud of Spruce pantry is always well supplied,” said Mrs. Dr. Palmer, smiling. In her smooth gray silk dress she looked, Marigold decided, just like a nice sleek gray cat.
“Well, give us something that will stick to our ribs,” said Cousin Marcus. “We’ve had dinner at a place—I won’t say where—but there was heaps of style and precious little comfort.”
“Marcus,” said Cousin Marcella rebukingly.
“Fact. And now, Marigold, I’ll give you a quarter for a kiss.”
Cousin Marcus was quite genial. A joke was his idea of being kind and friendly. But Marigold did not know this and she resented it. Lifting her head as she had seen Varvara do, she said freezingly,
“I don’t sell my kisses.”
The visitors laughed. Jack Carter said,
“She’s saving her kisses for me, Dad.”
There was another laugh. Marigold shot a furious glance at Jack. She did not like boys—any boys. And she at once hated Jack. He was about thirteen with a fat moon-face, straight whitish hair parted in the middle, staring china-blue eyes and spectacles. Under ordinary circumstances Marigold could and would have annihilated him with ease and pleasure. She had not sparred with Tommy Blair four years without learning how to handle the sex. But a Cloud of Spruce hostess must not show discourtesy to any guest
“She’s got a nice mouth for kissing, anyhow,” said Cousin Marcus more genially than ever.
2
Marigold left her guests in the orchard room and flew to the pantry. She was breathless with excitement, but she knew exactly what was to be done. There was plenty of cold boiled chicken and ham left over from the previous day; the Cloud of Spruce jam-pots were full as always. Cream galore for whipping. But hot biscuits—there must be hot biscuits—and cake!
If Marigold had been asked if she could cook she might have answered like canny Great-Uncle Malcolm when asked if he could play the violin. “He couldna’ say. He had never tried.”
Marigold had never tried. She could boil potatoes—and fry eggs—but further than that her culinary accomplishments as yet did not go. But she was going to try now. She had the Cloud of Spruce cook-book and she had helped Salome and Mother scores of times, looking forward with delight to the time when she would be allowed to do it off her own bat.
She clasped floury hands over the cake-bowl.
“Oh, dear God, I think I can manage the biscuits but you must help me with the cake.”
Then she proceeded to mix, measure and beat. To make matters worse, Jack appeared. Jack was not happy unless he was teasing somebody. He proceeded to tease Marigold, not having any idea that it was a dangerous pastime, even when protected by Cloud of Spruce custom.
“I’m a terrible fellow,” he declared. “I throw dead cats into wells. S’pose I throw yours?”
“I’ll get Lazarre to call the new pig after you,” said Marigold scornfully, and cracked an egg with violence.
Jack stared. What kind of girl was this?
“I’m just over the measles,” he said. “Black measles. Ever had measles?”
“No.”
“Mumps?”
“No.”
“I’ve had mumps and whooping cough and scarlet fever and chicken pox and pneumonia. I’m a wow to have things. You ever had any of them?”
“No.”
“Did you ever have anything?” Jack was plainly contemptuous.
“Yes,” said Marigold, suddenly recalling some of Aunt Marigold’s diagnoses. “I’ve had urticaria.”
Jack stared again—but more respectfully.
“Golly. Is it bad?”
“Incurable,” said Marigold mendaciously. “You never get over it.”
Jack edged away.
“Is it catching?”
“You couldn’t catch it.” There was that in Marigold’s tone Jack didn’t like. Did this puling girl think she had something he couldn’t have?
“Look here,” he said furiously, “you give yourself airs that don’t belong to you. And your nose is crooked. See!”
Marigold crimsoned to the tip of the offending nose. But tradition held. She spared Jack’s life.
“But if I ever meet you away from Cloud of Spruce I’ll ask you who put your ears on for you,” she thought as she measured the baking-powder.
“What are you thinking of?” queried Jack, resenting her silence.
“I’m imagining how you’ll look in your coffin,” answered Marigold deliberately.
This gave Jack to think. Was it safe to be alone with a girl who could imagine such things? But to leave her, was to confess defeat.
“In five minutes by that clock I’m going to kiss you,” he said with a fiendish grin.
Marigold shuddered and shut her eyes.
“If you do I’ll tell everybody at supper what a sweet-looking baby you were.”
That got under Jack’s skin. He wished he was well out of the pantry and the presence of this exasperating creature. He shifted to a new point of attack.
“My, but I’m sorry for the man you’re going to marry.”
Marigold cast tradition to the winds.
“Oh, never mind,” she said. “Your wife will be able to sympathize with him.”
“Don’t waste your breath now,” drawled Jack.
“It’s my breath.”
“Think you’re smart, don’t you?”
“I don’t think it, I know it,” retorted Marigold, beating her cake-batter terrifically.
“After all, you’re only a female,” said Jack insolently.
“I heard yo
u pinned a dishcloth to a minister’s coat once,” said Marigold.
But the minute she said it she knew she had made a mistake. He was proud of it.
“What are you two young divvils up to?” demanded Cousin Marcus, peering in at the door. “Oh, fond of the boys I see, Marigold. Come along, Jack. Lazarre is going to show us the apple-orchard.”
Jack, as relieved to be rid of Marigold as she was to be rid of him, vanished. Marigold breathed a sigh of thanksgiving. Oh, would her cake be all right? That wretched boy had bothered her so. Had she put in the baking-powder?
The cake was a gorgeous success. Marigold was a Lesley, and besides there was Providence—or Luck. It was a delicious feathery concoction with whipped cream and golden orange crescents on it—the special company-cake of Cloud of Spruce. And Marigold had just as good fortune with her biscuits. Then she set the table with the hemstitched cloth and Grandmother’s best Coalport. Every domestic rite of Cloud of Spruce was properly performed. The ham was sliced in thin pink slices, the chicken platter was parsley-fringed, the white cake-basket with the china roses round it was brought out, the water in the tumblers was ice-cold.
3
Marigold sat behind the tea-cups facing the ordeal before her, a gallant and smiling hostess. She could feel her pulses beating to her fingertips. If only her hands would not tremble! She steadied her legs by twisting them around the rungs of the chair. Cousin Marcus did what in him lay to rattle her by conjuring her not to fill the cups so full of tea that there wasn’t room for cream—as mean Aunt Harriet always did—and Dr. Palmer helped the chicken so lavishly that she broke out into a cold perspiration lest there shouldn’t be enough to go round. Mrs. Dr. Palmer took cream and no sugar and Dr. Palmer took sugar and no cream and Cousin Marcella took neither and Cousin Marcus took both. Cousin Olivia took cambric tea. It was very difficult to remember everything, but she thoroughly enjoyed asking Jack how he took his. It seemed to put him in his place for once. Eventually everybody got something to drink and the chicken did go round.
Jack kept quiet for a while, being fully occupied with gorging. But just as it had dawned on Marigold that the supper was almost over and had gone very well, Jack said,
“Say, Marigold, you can cook. If you’ll promise to have my slippers warm for me every night when I come home, I’ll come back and marry you when I grow up.”
“I wouldn’t marry you—”
“Oh, come, come now, my duck,” said Jack, with an irritating snigger, “wait till you’re asked.”
“So you were courting in the pantry,” chuckled Cousin Marcus.
Jack grinned like a Chessy cat.
“Marigold has such a nice little way of cuddling in your arms, Dad.”
He hadn’t really meant to say it, but it suddenly struck him as a very clever thing to say.
Marigold positively came out in goose-flesh.
“I haven’t—I mean—you couldn’t know it if I had.”
“You’re beginning young,” said Cousin Marcus solemnly, pretending to shake his head over the doings of modern youth.
Marigold had a stroke of diabolical inspiration.
“Johnsy is telling his dreams,” she said coolly.
That “Johnsy” was what Jack would have called “a mean wallop.” He dared not open his mouth again at the table and did not recover his impudence until they were leaving.
“Isn’t that a lovely moon?” said Marigold softly, more to herself than to any one, as she stood by the car.
“You should see the moons we have in Los Angeles,” he boasted.
“What do you really think of him?” said Uncle Marcus in a pig’s whisper, giving Marigold a poke in the ribs.
Marigold remembered that Salome had once said that Rose John had once said that if there was one thing more than another that lent spice to life, it was tormenting the men.
“I think Johnsy isn’t really half as big a fool as he looks,” she said condescendingly.
Cousin Marcus roared with laughter. “You’ve said a mouthful!” he exclaimed. Jack was crimson with rage. The car rolled away and Marigold stood by the gate, victress.
“I don’t know how it is some girls like boys,” she said.
4
When Grandmother and Mother came home—slightly annoyed, though they did not know it, that Great-Uncle William Lesley had been so inconsiderate as not to have died after all the bother but had rallied surprisingly—they had already heard the news, having met Cousin Marcus’s car on the road.
“Marigold, did you make the cake? Cousin Marcella said she wanted the recipe of our cake.”
“Yes,” said Marigold.
Grandmother sighed with relief.
“Thank goodness. When I heard there was cake I thought you must have borrowed it from Mrs. Donkin—like Rose John. You didn’t forget to put the pickles on.”
“No. I put pickles and chow both.”
“And you didn’t—you’re sure you didn’t—slop any tea over in the saucers.”
“I’m sure.”
Mother hugged Marigold in the blue room upstairs.
“Darling, you’re a brick! Grandmother and I felt dreadful until we found out there was cake.”
CHAPTER 18
Red Ink or—?
1
Marigold thought the world a charming place at all times but especially in September, when the hills were blue and the great wheat-fields along the harbor-shore warm gold and the glens of autumn full of shimmering leaves. Marigold always felt that there was something in the fall that belonged to her and her alone if she could only find it, and this secret quest made of September and October months of magic.
To be sure there was generally school in September. But not this September for Marigold. She had not been quite herself through the August heat, so Mother and Grandmother and Aunt Marigold, who remembered that she was an M.D. in her own right when Uncle Klon let her remember it, advised that she be kept out of school for some weeks longer.
Then Aunt Irene Winthrop wrote to Mother and asked her to let Marigold visit her and Uncle Maurice. Aunt Irene was Mother’s sister, and the Winthrops and the Lesleys were none too fond of each other. Grandmother rather grimly said she thought Marigold would be just as well at home.
“We let her visit Aunt Anne last year,” said Mother. “I suppose Irene thinks it is her turn now.”
Mother was too timid—or too good a diplomat—to say that she thought Marigold should visit her mother’s people as well as her father’s. But Grandmother understood it that way and offered no further objection. So Marigold went to Uncle Maurice and Aunt Irene at Owl’s Hill. A name that fascinated Marigold. Any name with a hill in it was beautiful and Owl’s Hill was magical.
Uncle Maurice and Aunt Irene were secretly a little afraid that Marigold might be lonesome and homesick. But Marigold never thought of such a thing. She liked Owl’s Hill tremendously. Such a romantic spot on a high sloping hill with a little tree-smothered village snuggling at its foot and above it woods where at night sounded laughter that was merry but not human, while other hills lay beyond like green wave after wave. Uncle Maurice’s face was so red and beaming that Marigold felt he made fine weather out of the gloomiest day. And Aunt Irene was like Mother. Only she laughed more, not being a widow. And having no Grandmother living with her.
There was a long letter to be written every night to Mother, in which Marigold told her everything that happened during the day. She always went down the lane to put it in the mail-box herself every morning. And there was Amy Josephs, of the chubby, agreeable brown face, next door, to play with. Amy was the daughter of Uncle Maurice’s brother, so a cousin of sorts if you like. Amy made a fairly satisfactorily playmate who really seemed to have a dim conception of what Marigold meant when she talked of the laughter of bluebells and daisies, and they had good fun together.
Amy’s two
village chums came up the hill to play with them. Marigold liked them fairly well also. Not one of the three was anything like as good a playmate as Sylvia but Marigold carefully concealed this thought because she was beginning to feel that it was a bit queer that she should like an imaginary playmate better than real ones. But there it was.
One of Amy’s chums was a very fat little girl with a most romantic name—June Page. A fair girl with hair so flaxen that beside it Marigold’s shone like spun gold. Caroline Chrysler was a missionary’s daughter. Sent home from India. Caroline, apart from her insistence on the fact that she was going to be a missionary, too—had been “consecrated to it in her cradle”—was quite a nice girl. It wasn’t her fault that she was dark and sallow—perhaps not her fault that she wouldn’t be called Carrie. Too frivolous for a consecrated. Marigold, who had once believed herself consecrated, too, could not be too hard on Caroline’s poses. So they all got on very well, each having her own private opinion of the others, and every new dawn that broke across the autumn upland, ushered in a day full of interest and delight.
Even Sundays.Marigold loved going down to church Sunday evenings with Aunt Irene and Amy. They always went down across the fields to the road. Aunt Irene always carried a little lantern because, though it was only crisp steel-blue twilight when they left, it was dark long before they reached the church. The lantern cast such fascinating shivery, giant shadows. They went along the edge of the sheep-pasture. Marigold loved the cool grass under her feet and the soft eerie sighs in the trees, the sweet wild odors of the wandering winds and the elfin laugh of the hidden brook down under the balsam-boughs. There was a smell of aftermath clover in the air and the Milky Way was overhead. All around were misty stars over the harvest-fields. One really felt too happy for Sunday.
Aunt Irene never talked much and Amy and Marigold talked in whispers.
“I wonder if Hip Price will be in church tonight,” said Amy.
“Who is Hip Price?” asked Marigold.
“He’s the minister’s son. His real name is Howard Ingraham Price, but he never gets anything but Hip—from his initials. He’s awfully clever. I never,” vowed Amy, speaking out of her tremendous experience of eleven and a half years, “met anyone who knew so much. And he’s so brave. He saved a little girl from drowning once, at the risk of his life.”