Even the lunch—to which she looked forward a little ashamedly after a week of Aunt Min’s diet—was a disappointment. There was plenty of it—but Mrs. Dixon was not a good cook. Marigold ate stale sandwiches, and cookies that reeked of soda, and a piece of mushy lemon-pie. She always believed that she also ate two crickets that had got tangled up in the meringue of the pie. But Billy thought that feed was extra-x. “I wish to goodness I could eat some more but I can’t,” he sighed, bolting the last morsel of a gorgeous piece of cake whose iced surface was decorated with violent red-and-yellow candies.
3
“Wasn’t it jolly?” said Billy, drawing a long unregretful breath as they walked home together through the hayfield.
“Won’t it be jolly when Aunt Min asks you to write a synopsis and you can’t?” demanded Marigold rather wearily and sarcastically.
Billy grinned.
“I’ll just write it. This Flying Roll book is full of sermons. I read some dandy ones in it one day down at Dixons’ before you came. We’ll just write a snopsis of one of them, and Aunt Min will never know the difference.”
“We won’t,” cried Marigold. “You can do as you like, but I won’t cheat like that.”
“Then you’ll go and give the whole thing away,” said Billy, pale with wrath and fear.
“No-o-o, I won’t. I’ll just tell Aunt Min I couldn’t write a synopsis.”
“She’ll send you to bed ’thout any supper.”
“I don’t care,” said Marigold pathetically, putting her hand on her stomach. “That lemon-pie was awful.”
Billy betook himself to a little room Aunt Min called her library. His opinion was that writing a “snopsis” with the printed sermon before you was a snap. When Aunt Min came home he was ready for her. Marigold said, with a very good imitation of Grandmother Lesley’s manner, that she could not write a synopsis.
Aunt Min looked at her for a moment but said nothing. She took Billy’s copious sheets with a very grim smile—a smile that speedily changed to a frown.
“Surely—surely Harvey Nelson never preached such stuff as this.”
“Why, what’s the matter with it?” cried Billy.
“Matter. It’s heresy—rank heresy. Why, the man must be a Second Adventist. I never read such doctrines. Well, he’ll not get any call to Windyside if I can prevent it. I was in favor of him because he’s engaged to Dovie Sinclair and she is a distant relation of mine. But this preposterous sermon is too much.”
Aunt Min rustled indignantly out of the room, leaving Billy to reflect on the snares and pitfalls of existence.
“What do you suppose was wrong with it?” he whispered miserably.
“I don’t know,” said Marigold agitatedly, “but I do know that if Mr. Nelson is engaged to Dovie Sinclair he’s got to get that call. Dovie is my Sunday-school teacher at home and I won’t have her disappointed through our fault.”
“Don’t you dare snitch on me,” cried Billy. “Let things alone. Maybe she’ll cool down—or find out from someone else he didn’t preach it.”
Marigold’s face was white and tragic.
“She never will. She’ll just say he doesn’t preach sound doctrine and she won’t explain anything about it. You know Aunt Min. She’s got to be told and I’m going to tell her. But you needn’t come if you’re scared.”
“I’m scared but I’m coming. You don’t suppose I’m going to leave you to do it all alone?” said Billy staunchly. “Besides it was all my doings. I made you go. If Aunt Min has to be told, she’s gotter be told that, too.”
No wonder folks liked Billy.
4
Half an hour later Billy and Marigold were sitting on the granary steps. The fatal interview was over and it had not been a pleasant one, to state it mildly.
None the pleasanter for Marigold in that Aunt Min forgave her readily because Billy had led her astray. Perhaps Aunt Min did not want to get in wrong with the Cloud of Spruce people. But all the vials of her wrath were uncorked on Billy’s devoted head. She told Billy he had disgraced his name and ordered him to go out and stay out until she had decided on his punishment.
If it had not been for Billy, Marigold would have been feeling very happy. It was so delightful to be good friends with herself again. And—if only one knew what was going to be done to Billy—it was such a perfect evening. Those little golden dells among the sunset hills—that path of moonrise glitter on the harbor over which a ship of dreams might come sailing—those gossiping poplars—the green creaminess of that field of buckwheat-blossom in the shade of the wood—those pines behind the well like big green purring pussy-cats—that sweetest imp-faced kitten purring at her from under the milk-bench—but—
“What do you suppose she’ll do?” she whispered to Billy. The subject had such a gruesome fascination.
“Oh, likely make me wear a girl’s apron for a week,” groaned Billy. “She made we wear one for two days the time I put the peanut-shells in Elder Johnny’s pocket at prayer-meeting. Say,” Billy began to laugh, “that was fun. When he pulled out his hanky in the middle of his prayer the shells flew every which way for a Sunday. One struck the minister on the nose.”
Marigold saw the picture and laughed satisfyingly. Billy reflected gloomily that she was going home Tuesday. If only she were to be around to help him through whatever Aunt Min would visit on him. To be sure, she had got him into the scrape but he bore her no grudge for that. She was a good little scout.
The moon had come up until she seemed to be resting on the very tip of the tall Lombardy on the hills when Aunt Min came across the yard, a rigid figure of outraged majesty. She looked scornfully at Billy and spoke in a sad, gentle way. When Aunt Min banged doors and looked or spoke sourly or sharply no one worried. But when Aunt Min smiled in that curious sweet fashion and spoke in that low, even tone, then beware. It was the calm before the levin-bolt.
“Do you realize that you have behaved very badly?” she asked.
“Yes’m,” gulped Billy.
“I have decided—” Aunt Min paused.
Billy was speaking. What fiendish punishment had Aunt Min devised? Marigold slipped a little cold hand of backing into his.
“I don’t feel equal to the responsibility of looking after you any longer,” resumed Aunt Min more gently than ever, “so I have decided to send you to your Aunt Nora’s tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 21
Her Chrism of Womanhood
1
A new magic had fallen over Cloud of Spruce. Grandmother solemnly decreed that Marigold might play with Sidney Guest. Grandmother would not, of course, call him Budge as everybody else did. His mother was a Randolph from Charlottetown, so that he was a quite permissible playmate for a Lesley of Harmony. Mr. Guest had bought Mr. Donkin’s farm and so Budge lived right next door to Cloud of Spruce.
He was a “nice-mannered” little boy, so Grandmother said. Rather thin and scrawny as to looks, with sandy hair but fine clear gray eyes. The only thing Grandmother was seriously afraid of was that they might poison themselves in some of their prowls and rambles. Not an ill-founded fear at all. For, in spite of all warnings, they ate or tried to eat nearly everything they came across.
Marigold had never had a real playmate in Harmony before, save for Gwen’s hectic three weeks. She did not seem to care for any of the girls in Harmony, and though she wrote fat gossipy letters to Gwen and Paula and Bernice she did not see them very often. Perhaps Sylvia spoiled her for other little girls, as Mother sometimes thought rather anxiously. Mother had always defended Sylvia, sympathizing against a Grandmother who did not understand some things. But sometimes lately she wondered if she had been wise in so doing. It would not be a good thing if the wild secret charm of fairy-playmates spoiled Marigold for the necessary and valuable companionship of her kind. Marigold was twelve. Her golden hair was deepening to warm brown and she had at last learn
ed not to pronounce interesting “int’resting.” Surely it was time she was outgrowing Sylvia.
So Lorraine Lesley was glad when, just at the beginning of vacation, the Guests bought the Donkin place and Marigold and Budge took a prompt liking to each other. Marigold was amazed to find herself really liking a boy. She had never liked any of the boys in school. She had liked Billy but she had forgotten him. She had detested Cousin Marcus’s Jack. As for Hip Price, he had made her hate all boys for a time. But Budge was different from any boy she had ever known.
For weeks Marigold’s existence became one of hair-raising excitement. She did things to win Budge’s approval that she had never dreamed of doing. They went trouting up the brook and Marigold was such a sport in regard to worms that Budge thought in his heart—but did not say—that she was almost as good as a boy. They waded under the bridge. They climbed to the ventilator on top of the big Guest barn. They played pirate on an old green boat—the Daisy Dean—stranded on the harbor shore, with a black flag made out of Salome’s old black silk skirt and decorated with a skull and cross-bones. In it they sailed on amazing voyages hunting for gold and glamour and adventure. They had a password and a secret sign. They fixed up a stove of stones and cooked mussels and potatoes over it.
With Budge, Marigold could explore all the pretty play-lands down the harbor where she would never have dared to go alone. They even went as far as that gray misty end of the world known as the harbor’s mouth, where the silver-and-lilac sand-dunes stretched in all their wild sweet loveliness of salt-withered grasses and piping sea-winds. Nobody ever knew that or that they had got caught by the tide and had to climb the banks and come home through dripping wet meadows. ’Taws a guilty triumphant secret. And another was the driftwood fire they made on the shore one twilight. They had both been told never to play with fire, but that did not spoil their enjoyment of it one bit. Rather heightened it, I am afraid. This secret forbidden thing had a charm all its own. And some days they fairly lived in the froggy marsh—where a very decent dragon also had his abode and grizzly bears grizzled.
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 realize 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 parlor 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 harbor shore. Budge and Tad had the kitten-hunt in the Guest barn which Marigold and Budge had planned to have in the fullness 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 Grandmothe
r 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.