He could carve wonderful baskets out of plum-stones and make fairy horns out of birch-bark, and he always knew the right time of the moon to do anything. She loved to talk with him, though if Mother and the Grandmothers had known what they talked about sometimes they would have put a sharp and sudden stop to it. For Lazarre, who firmly believed in fairies and witches and “ghostises” of all kinds, lived therefore in a world of romance, and made Marigold’s flesh creep deliciously with his yarns. She didn’t believe them all, but you had to believe what had happened to Lazarre himself. He had seen his Grandmother in the middle of the night standing by his bed when she was forty miles away. And next day word had come that the old lady had “gone daid.”
That night Marigold had cried out in terror, when Mother was taking the lamp out of her room, “Oh, Mother, don’t let the dark in—don’t let the dark in. Oh, Mother, I’m so afraid of the big dark.”
She had never been afraid to go to sleep in the dark before, and Mother and Young Grandmother could not understand what had got into her. Finally they compromised by leaving the light in Mother’s room with the door open. You had to go through Mother’s room to get to Marigold’s. The dusky, golden half-light was a comfort. If people came and stood by your bed in the middle of the night—people who were forty miles away—you could at least see them.
Sometimes Lazarre played his fiddle in the orchard on moonlight nights and Marigold danced to it. Nobody could play the fiddle like Lazarre. Even Salome grudgingly admitted that.
“It’s angelic, ma’am, that’s what it is,” she said with solemn reluctance as she listened to the bewitching lilts of the unseen musician up in the orchard. “And to think that easygoing French boy can make it. My good, hardworking brother tried all his life to learn to play the fiddle and never could. And this Lazarre can do it without trying. Why he can almost make me dance.”
“That would be a miracle indeed,” said Uncle Klon.
And Young Grandmother did tell Marigold she spent too much time with Lazarre.
“But I like him so much, and I want to see as much of him as I can in this world,” explained Marigold. “Salome says he can’t go to heaven because he’s a Frenchman.”
“Salome is very wicked and foolish to say such a thing,” said Young Grandmother sternly. “Of course, Frenchmen go to heaven if they behave themselves”—not as if she were any too sure of it herself, however.
4
Salome went through the hall and into the orchard room with a cup of tea for Old Grandmother. As the door opened Marigold heard Aunt Marigold say,
“We’d better go to the graveyard next Sunday.”
Marigold hugged herself with delight. One Sunday in every spring the Cloud of Spruce folks made a special visit to the little burying-ground on a western hill with flowers for their graves. Nobody went with them except Uncle Klon and Aunt Marigold. And Marigold loved a visit to the graveyard and particularly to Father’s grave. She had an uneasy conviction that she ought to feel sad, as Mother and Young Grandmother did, but she never could manage it.
It was really such a charming spot. That smooth gray stone between the two dear young firs all greened over with their new spring tips, and the big spirea-bush almost hiding the grave and waving a hundred white hands to you in the wind that rippled the long grasses. The graveyard was full of spirea. Salome liked this. “Makes it more cheerful-like,” she was wont to say. Marigold didn’t know whether the graveyard was cheerful or not, but she knew she loved it. Especially when Uncle Klon was with her. Marigold was very fond of Uncle Klon. There was such fun in him. His sayings were so interesting. He had such a delightful way of saying, “When I was in Ceylon,” or “When I was in Borneo,” as another might say, “When I was in Charlottetown” or “When I was over the bay.” And he occasionally swore such fascinating oaths—at least Salome said they were oaths, though they didn’t sound like it. “By the three wise monkeys,” was one of them. So mysterious. What were the three wise monkeys? Nobody ever talked to her as he did. He told her splendid stories of the brave days of old, and wonderful yarns of his own adventures. For instance, that thrilling tale of the night he was lost on the divide between Gold Run and Sulphur Valleys in the Klondike. And that one about the ivory island in the far northern seas—an island covered with walrus tusks heaped like driftwood, as if all the walruses went there to die. He told her jokes. He always made her laugh—even in the graveyard, because he told her such funny stories about the names on the tombstones and altogether made her feel that these folks were really all alive somewhere. Father and all, just as nice and funny as they were in the world. So why grieve about them? Why sigh as Salome always did when she paused by Mrs. Amos Reekie’s grave and said,
“Ah, many’s the cup of tea I’ve drunk with her!”
“Won’t you drink lots more with her in heaven?” demanded Marigold once, rather recklessly, after some of Uncle Klon’s yarns.
“Good gracious, no, child.” Salome was dreadfully shocked. Though in her secret soul she thought heaven would be a much more cheerful place if one could have a good cup of tea with an old crony.
“They drink wine there, don’t they?” persisted Marigold. “The Bible says so. Don’t you think a cup of tea would be more respectable than wine?”
Salome did think so, but she would have died the death before she would have corrupted Marigold’s youthful mind by saying so.
“There are mysteries too deep for us poor mortals to understand,” she said solemnly.
Uncle Klon was third in Marigold’s young affections. Mother of course came first; and then Aunt Marigold, with her dear wide mouth quirked up at the corners, so that she always seemed to be laughing even when very sad. These three were in the inner sanctum of Marigold’s heart, a very exclusive little sanctum out of which were shut many who thought they had a perfect right to be there.
Marigold sometimes wondered whom she wanted to be like when she grew up. In some moods she wanted to be like Mother. But Mother was “put upon.” Generally she thought she wanted to be like Aunt Marigold—who had a little way of saying things. Nobody else could have said them. Marigold always felt she would recognize one of Aunt Marigold’s sayings if she met it in her porridge. And when she said only, “It’s a fine day,” her voice had a nice confidential tone that made you feel nobody else knew it was a fine day—that it was a lovely secret shared between you. And when you had supper at Aunt Marigold’s she made you take a third helping.
5
Marigold hardly knew where the Grandmothers came in. She knew she ought to love them, but did she? Even at six, Marigold had discovered that you cannot love by rule o’ thumb.
Young Grandmother was not so bad. She was old, of course, with that frost-fine, serene old age that is in its way as beautiful as youth. Marigold felt this long before she could define it, and was disposed to admire Young Grandmother.
But Old Grandmother. To Marigold, Old Grandmother, so incredibly old, had never seemed like anything human. She could never have been born; it was equally unthinkable that she could ever die. Marigold was thankful she did not have to go into Old Grandmother’s room very often. Old Grandmother could not be bothered with children—“unspanked nuisances,” she called them.
But she had to go sometimes. When she had been naughty she was occasionally sent to sit on a little stool on the floor of Old Grandmother’s room as a punishment. And a very dreadful punishment it was—much worse than Mother and Young Grandmother, who thought they were being lenient, realized. There she sat for what seemed like hours, and Old Grandmother sat up against her pillows and stared at her unwinkingly. Never speaking. That was what made it so ghastly.
Though when she did speak it was not very pleasant, either. How contemptuous Old Grandmother could be. Once when she had made Marigold angry, “Hoity toity, a little pot is soon hot!” Marigold winched under the humiliation of it for days. A little pot indeed!
It was no use trying to keep anything from this terrible old lady who saw through everything. Once Marigold had tried to hoodwink her with a small half-fib.
“You are not a true Lesley. The Lesleys never lie,” said Old Grandmother.
“Oh, don’t they!” cried Marigold, who already knew better.
Suddenly Old Grandmother laughed. Old Grandmother was surprising sometimes. After Marigold had gone into the spare room one day and tried on the hats of several guests, there was a council in the orchard room that evening. Mother and Young Grandmother were horrified. But Old Grandmother would not allow Marigold to be punished.
“I did that myself once,” she said. “But I wasn’t found out,” she whispered to Marigold with a chuckle. She chuckled again on the day when Young Grandmother had asked Marigold a foolish, unanswerable question. “Why are you so bad?” But Marigold had answered it—sulkily. “It’s more int’resting than being good.”
Old Grandmother called her back as she was following outraged Young Grandmother out of the room, and put a tiny blue-veined hand on her shoulder.
“It may be more interesting,” she whispered, “but you can’t keep it up because you’re a Lesley. The Lesleys never could be bad with any comfort to themselves. Too much conscience. No use making yourself miserable just for the sake of being bad.”
Marigold always went into the orchard room on Sunday mornings to recite her golden text and catechism questions to Old Grandmother. Woe betide her if she missed a word. And in her nervousness she always did miss, no matter how perfectly she could say them before she went in. And she always was sent in there to take pills. Nobody at Cloud of Spruce could make Marigold take pills except Old Grandmother. She had no trouble. “Don’t screw up your face like that. I hate ugly children. Open your mouth.” Marigold opened it. “Pop it in.” Popped in it was. “Swallow it.” It was swallowed—somehow. And then Old Grandmother would put her hand somewhere about the bed and produce a handful of big fat juicy blue raisins.
For she was not always unamiable. And sometimes she showed Marigold the big family Bible—a sort of Golden Book where all the clan names were written, and where all sorts of yellowed old clippings were kept. And sometimes she told her stories about the brides on the walls and the hair wreaths where the brown and gold and black locks of innumerable dead and gone Lesleys bloomed in weird, unfading buds and blossoms.
Old Grandmother was always saying things, too—queer, odd speeches with a tang in them Marigold somehow liked. They generally shocked Young Grandmother and Mother, but Marigold remembered and pondered over them though she seldom understood them fully. They did not seem related to anything in her small experience. In after life they were to come back to her. In many a crisis some speech of Old Grandmother’s suddenly popped into mind and saved her from making a mistake.
But on the whole Marigold always breathed a sigh of relief when the door of the orchard room closed behind her.
6
Marigold at six had already experienced most of the passions that make life vivid and dreadful and wonderful—none the less vivid and dreadful at six than at sixteen or sixty. Probably she was born knowing that you were born to the purple if you were a Lesley. But pride of race blossomed to full stature in her the day she talked with little May Kemp from the Hollow.
“Do you wash your face every day?” asked May incredulously.
“Yes,” said Marigold.
“Whether it needs it or not?”
“Of course. Don’t you?”
“Not me,” said May contemptuously. “I just wash mine when it’s dirty.”
Then Marigold realized the difference between the Lesley caste and outsiders as all Young Grandmother’s homilies had not been able to make her.
Shame? Oh, she had known it to the full—drunk its cup to the dregs. Would she ever forget that terrible supper-table when she had slipped, red and breathless, into her seat, apologizing for being late? An inexcusable thing when there were company to tea—two ministers and two ministers’ wives.
“I couldn’t help it, Mother. I went to help Kate Blacquierre drive Mr. Donkin’s cows to water and we had such a time chasing that bloody heifer.”
At once Marigold knew she had said something dreadful. The frozen horror on the faces of her family told her that. One minister looked aghast, one hid a grin.
What had she said?
“Marigold, you may leave the table and go to your room,” said Mother, who seemed almost on the point of tears.
Marigold obeyed wretchedly, having no idea in the world what it was all about. Later on she found out.
“But Kate said it,” she wailed. “Kate said she’d like to break every bloody bone in that bloody heifer’s body. I never thought ‘bloody’ was swearing, though it’s an ugly word.”
She had sworn before the minister—before two ministers. And their wives! Marigold did not think she could ever live it down. A hot wave of shame ran over her whenever she thought about it. It did not matter that she was never allowed to go with Kate again; she had not cared much for Kate anyhow. But to have disgraced herself and Mother and the Lesley name! She had thought it bad enough when she had asked Mr. Lord of Charlottetown, with awe and reverence, “Please, are you God?” She had been laughed at so for that and had suffered keen humiliation. But this! And yet she could not understand why “bloody” was swearing. Even Old Grandmother—who had laughed herself sick over the incident—couldn’t explain that.
The spirit of jealousy had claimed her, too. She was secretly jealous of Clementine, the girl who had once been Father’s wife—whose grave was beside his on the hill under the spireas—jealous for her mother. Father had belonged to Clementine once. Perhaps he belonged to her again now. There were times when Marigold was absolutely possessed with this absurd jealousy. When she went into Old Grandmother’s room and saw Clementine’s beautiful picture on the wall, she hated it. She wanted to go up and tear it down and trample on it. Lorraine would have been horrified if she had dreamed of Marigold’s feelings in this respect. But Marigold kept her secret fiercely and went on hating Clementine—especially her beautiful hands. Marigold thought her mother quite as beautiful as Clementine. She always felt so sorry for little girls whose mothers were not beautiful. And Mother had the loveliest feet. Uncle Klon had said more than once that Lorraine had the daintiest little foot and ankle he had ever seen in a woman. This did not count for much among the Lesleys. Ankles were better not spoken of, even if the present-day fashion of skirts did show them shamelessly. But Mother’s hands weren’t pretty; they were too thin—too small; and Marigold felt sometimes she just couldn’t bear Clementine’s hands. Especially when some of the clan praised them. Old Grandmother referred to them constantly; it really did seem as if Old Grandmother sensed Marigold’s jealousy and liked to tease her.
“I don’t think she was so pretty,” Marigold had been tortured into saying once.
Old Grandmother smiled.
“Clementine Lawrence was a beauty, my dear. Not an insignificant little thing like—like her sister up there in Harmony.”
But Marigold felt sure Old Grandmother had started to say “like your mother,” and she hated Clementine and her hands and her fadeless white lily more poisonously than ever.
Grief? Sorrow? Why, her heart nearly broke when her dear gray kitten had died. She had never known before that anything she loved could die. “Has yesterday gone to heaven, Mother?” she had sobbed the next day.
“I—I suppose so,” said Mother.
“Then I don’t want to go to heaven,” Marigold had cried stormily. “I never want to meet that dreadful day again.”
“You’ll probably have to meet far harder days than that,” had been Young Grandmother’s comforting remark.
As for fear, had she not always known it? One of her very earliest memories was of being shut up in the dim shuttered parlor because she had spilled
some of her jam pudding on Young Grandmother’s best tablecloth. How such a little bit of pudding could have spread itself over so much territory she could not understand. But into the parlor she went—a terrible room with its queer streaky lights and shadows. And as she huddled against the door in the gloom she saw a dreadful thing. To the day of her death Marigold believed it happened. All the chairs in the room suddenly began dancing around the table in a circle headed by the big horsehair rocking-chair. And every time the rocking-chair galloped past her it bowed to her with awful, exaggerated politeness. Marigold screamed so wildly that they came and took her out—disgusted that she could not endure so easy a punishment.
“That’s the Winthrop coming out in her,” said Young Grandmother nastily.
The Lesleys and Blaisdells had more pluck. Marigold never told what had frightened her. She knew they would not believe her. But it was to be years before she could go into the parlor without a shudder, and she would have died rather than sit in that horsehair rocking-chair.
She had never been quite so vindictive over anything as over the affair of the Skinner doll. That had happened last August. May Kemp’s mother had come up to clean the apple-barn, and May had come with her. May and Marigold had played happily for a while in the playhouse in the square of currant-bushes—a beautiful playhouse in that you could sit in it and eat ruby-hued fruit off your own walls—and then May had said she would give one of her eyes to see the famous Skinner doll. Marigold had gone bravely into the orchard room to ask Old Grandmother if May might come in and see it. She found Old Grandmother asleep—really asleep, not pretending as she sometimes did. Marigold was turning away when her eyes fell on Alicia. Somehow Alicia looked so lovely and appealing—as if she were asking for a little fun. Impulsively Marigold ran to the glass case, opened the door and took Alicia out. She even slipped the shoe out of the hand that had held it for years, and put it on the waiting foot.