Magic for Marigold (17 page)

3

Came a morning when Grandmother and Mother had to go into Harmony village. Grandmother was getting a new black satin made and Mother had a date with the dentist. They would be away most of the forenoon and Salome had been summoned away by the illness of a relative, but Gwendolen was so good and Marigold so much improved that they did not feel any special anxiety over leaving them alone. But just before they drove away Grandmother said to them,

“Now mind you, don't either of you stick your head between the bars of the gate.”

Nobody to this day knows why Grandmother said that. Marigold believes it was simply predestination. Nobody ever
had
stuck her head between the bars of the gate and it had been there for ten years. A substantial gate of slender crisscross iron bars. No flimsy wire gates for Cloud of Spruce. It had never occurred to Marigold to stick her head between the bars of the gate. Nor did it occur to her now.

But as soon as Grandmother and Mother had disappeared from sight down the road Gwendolen the model, who had been strangely silent all the morning, said deliberately,

“I
am
going to stick my head through the bars of the gate.”

Marigold couldn't believe her ears. After what Grandmother had said! The good, so-obedient Gwendolen!

“I'm not going to be bossed by an old woman any longer.”

She marched down the steps and down the walk, followed by the suddenly alarmed Marigold.

“Oh, don't—don't, please, Gwennie,” she begged. “I'm sure it isn't safe—the squares are so small. What if you couldn't get it out again?”

For answer, Gwendolen stuck her head through one of the oblong spaces between the bars. Pushed her head through to be exact—and it was a tight squeeze.

“There!” she said triumphantly, her mop of curls falling forward over her face and confirming a wild suspicion Marigold had felt at the breakfast-table—that Gwendolen had not washed behind her ears that morning.

“Oh, take it out—please, Gwennie,” begged Marigold.

“I'll take it out when I please, Miss Prunes-and-prisms. I'm so sick of being good that I'm going to be just as bad as I want to be after this. I don't care how shocked you will be. You just watch the next thing I do.”

Marigold's world seemed to spin around her. Before it grew steady again she heard Gwendolen give a frantic little yowl.

“Oh, I can't get my head out,” she cried. “I can't—get—my—head—out.”

Nor could she. The thick mop of curls falling forward made just the difference of getting in and getting out. Pull—writhe—twist—squirm as she might, she could not free herself. Marigold, in a panic, climbed over the gate and tried to push the head back—with no results save yelps of anguish from Gwendolen, who, if she were hurt as badly as she sounded, was very badly hurt indeed.

Gwendolen was certainly very uncomfortable. The unnatural position made her back and legs ache frightfully. She declared that the blood was running into her head and she would die. Marigold, shaking in the grip of this new terror, murmured faintly,

“Will it—do—any good—to pray?”

“Pray—pray. If you went for the blacksmith it would do more good than all the prayers in the world, you sickening, pious little cat!” said the spiritual Gwendolen.

The blacksmith! Phidime Gautier. Marigold went cold all over. She was in mortal dread of Phidime, who was a dead shot with tobacco-juice and not the least particular about his targets. She had never really believed the legend about the baby, but the impression of it was still in possession of her feelings. Phidime was very gruff and quick-tempered and never “stood for any kids” hanging round his shop. Marigold felt that she could never have the courage to go to Phidime.

“Oh, don't you think if I took you round the waist and pulled hard I could pull you out?” she gasped.

“Yes, and pull my head clean off,” snapped Gwendolen. She gave another agonized squirm but to no effect, except that she nearly scraped one of her ears off. Suddenly she began shrieking like a maniac. “I can't stand this another minute—I can't,” she gasped between shrieks. “Oh—I'm dying—I'm dying.”

Marigold dared hesitate no longer. She tore off down the road like a mad thing. As she went the wild howls of Gwendolen Vincent could be heard faintly and more faintly. Was Gwennie dead? Or just yelled out?

“Hey, left a pie in the oven?” shouted Uncle Jed Clark as she spun by him.

Marigold answered not. To reach the blacksmith shop, to gasp out her tale, took all the breath she had.

“For de love of all de saints,” said Phidime. He killed a nail on the floor with a squirt of tobacco-juice and hunted out a file very deliberately. Phidime had never seen any reason why he should hurry. And Gwennie might be dead!

Eventually the file was found, and he started up the road like the grim black ogre of fairy-tales. Gwendolen was not dead. She was still shrieking.

“Here now, stop dat yelling,” said Phidime unsympathetically.

It took some time to file the bar and Phidime was not overly gentle. But at last it was done and Gwendolen Vincent was free, considerably rumpled and disheveled, with a head that felt as if it were three sizes larger than ordinarily.

“Don't you go for do dat fool t'ing any more again,” said Phidime warningly.

Gwendolen looked up at him and said spitefully,

“Old devil-face!”

Marigold nearly dropped in her tracks. Ladylike? Spiritual? Not to speak of commonly grateful?

“You keep dat sassy tongue of yours in your haid,” said Phidime blackly as he turned away. Gwendolen stuck her tongue out at him.

Marigold was feeling a bit shrewish after her terror. She looked at Gwendolen and uttered the four most unpopular words in the world.

“I told you so,” said Marigold.

“Oh, shut your head!”

This was indecent. “Shut your mouth” was an old friend—Marigold had often heard the boys at school using it—but “shut you head” was an interloper.

“I don't care if you
are
shocked, Miss Prim,” said Gwendolen. “I'm through with trying to be as good as you. Nobody could be. I don't care
what
Aunt Josephine says.”

“Aunt—Jo-seph-ine!”

“Yes, Aunt Jo-seph-ine! She does nothing all the time she is at Rush Hill but sing your praises.”

“Mine!” gasped Marigold.

“Yes. She just held you up as a perfect model—always telling me how good you were! I knew I'd hate you—and I didn't want to come here for a visit—I like to go somewhere where something's happening all the time—but Father made me. And I made up my mind I'd be just as ladylike as you. Such a week!”

“Aunt Josephine told me
you
were a model—a perfect lady. I've been trying to be as good as you,” gasped Marigold.

They looked at each other for a moment—and understood. Gwendolen began to laugh.

“I just couldn't stand it a day longer. That's why I stuck my head in the gate.”

“Aunt Josephine told me you said hymns before you went to sleep—and took an angel for your model—and—”

“I was just stuffing Aunt Josephine. My, but it was easy to pull her leg.”

Which was wicked of course. But in proportion to the wickedness did Marigold's sudden and new-born affection for Gwendolen Vincent increase.

“She made me so mad praising you. I wanted to show her you weren't the only saint in the world.”

“Did you really want to hear that missionary?” asked Marigold.

“I sure did. Wanted to hear if he'd tell any cannibal yarns sos we could make a game of them when I went back to Rush Hill,” said Gwennie promptly.

Which was wickeder still. But oh, how Marigold loved Gwennie.

“We've wasted a week,” she said mournfully.

“Never mind. We'll make up for it this week,” said Gwendolen Vincent ominously.

Grandmother can't understand it to this day. She never forgot that second week.

“One of your deep ones, that,” Salome always said afterwards, whenever anyone mentioned the name of Gwendolen Vincent.

“You can't always tell a saint by the cut of his jib,” remarked Lucifer, who had never felt that his tail was safe in spite of Gwendolen's saintliness.

Marigold Entertains

1

“No more fat for me. I've nearly died eating fat this week,” was Gwendolen's declaration of independence that night at supper. Grandmother, who hadn't noticed the gate yet—Phidime had wired it up rather cleverly—wondered what had happened to her.

“You should eat the fat
with
the lean,” she said severely.

Gwennie stuck out her tongue at Grandmother. It gave Marigold a shock to realize that anybody could do that and live. Grandmother actually said nothing. What was there to say? But she reflected that Annie Vincent's child possibly ran truer to form than they had supposed after all. Grandmother would never have admitted it, but she was almost as tired of Gwennie's perfection as Marigold was. So she pretended not to see the grimace.

Grandmother had to pretend blindness a good many times in the days that followed, rather than outrage hospitality and incur Annie Vincent's eternal wrath by spanking her offspring or sending her home with a flea in her ear. The famed serenity of Cloud of Spruce was smashed to smithereens. A day without a thrill was a lost day for Gwennie.

Marigold enjoyed it—with reservations. Gwennie cared nothing for storybooks or kittens and knew nothing whatever about the dryads that lived in the beech clump or the wind spirits that came up the harbor on stormy nights. Marigold would never have dreamed of telling her about Sylvia or taking her along the secret paths of her enchanted groves. But still Gwennie was a good little scout. There was always something doing when she was about, and she
was
funny. She was always “taking off” someone. She could imitate anyone to perfection. It was very amusing—though you always had a little uneasy feeling that the minute your back was turned she might be imitating
you.
Grandmother really was very cross the day Gwennie spilled soup over Mrs. Dr. Emsley's silk dress at the dinner-table because she was “taking off” the old doctor's way of eating soup and sending poor Marigold into convulsions of unholy mirth.

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 baptize 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 baptized 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 baptized. 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 baptizing 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 today. 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 today. 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 baptize 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 centerpiece, 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 someone 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 sulfurous, 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 centerpiece—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 harbor 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 favors 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 Harbor 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 mustache 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 today—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.