Magic for Marigold (20 page)

“Dear little children,” said Tabby Derusha, lifting one of Gwen's lovely curls gently. “Hair soft as silk—sweet little faces—pretty little dears.”

There was a touch soft as a rose-leaf on Marigold's cheek. Tabby gloated over them for a few minutes longer. Then she was gone, as noiselessly as she had come. But Marigold was no longer afraid. She felt as safe and as much at home as if she were in her own blue room at Cloud of Spruce. After all, it had been an int'resting day. And Gwen was all right. She hadn't stolen her prayer. Marigold said it over again under her breath—the beautiful little prayer she loved because it
was
so beautiful and because Aunt Marigold had made it up for her—and went to sleep.

6

“I didn't sleep a wink the whole night,” vowed Gwen.

“Never mind, here's a new morning—such a lovely new morning,” said Marigold.

The rain was over. The southwest wind the Weed Man had promised Captain Simons was blowing. The clouds were racing before it. Down on the beach the water was purring in little blue ripples. The sky in the east was all rosy silver. The grass was green and wet on the high red cliffs. Over the harbor hung a milky mist. Then the rising sun rent it apart and made a rainbow of it. A vessel came sailing through it over a glistening path. Never, thought Marigold, had the world seemed so lovely.

“What are you doing?” said Gwen, struggling impatiently into her clothes, much annoyed because Buttons had got in after all and slept on her dress.

“I—I think—I'm praying,” said Marigold dreamily.

7

Uncle Klon came for them in his car before breakfast was over.

“Are they very mad at Cloud of Spruce?” asked Gwennie. Rather soberly for her. She did not like Uncle Klon. He was always too many for her.

“There's a special Providence for children and idiots,” said Uncle Klon gently. “Jim Donkin forgot to give the message till late last night and they were so relieved to find out where you had gone, that the dining-room rather sank into the background. You'd better not look again on blueberry wine when it is purple, Miss Gwen.”

“It's a good thing we're too big to be spanked,” whispered Gwen, when she saw Grandmother's face.

“I believe you,” said Lucifer.

A Ghost Is Laid

1

That affair of the blueberry wine was certainly a bad business. There was some secret talk at Cloud of Spruce of sending Gwennie home after it. But nothing came of it, and Gwennie never even knew it had been mooted. It would never do to offend Luther and Annie, Grandmother concluded, though for her part she couldn't understand Josephine. But the real reason was that they all liked Gwennie in spite of—or maybe because of—her deviltries. “An amusing compound of mischief and precocity,” said Uncle Klon, who liked to be amused.

“A darn leetle minx,” said Lazarre, but he ran his legs off for her. “A child of Beelzebub,” said Salome, but kept the old stone cookie-jar full of hop-and-go-fetch-its for Gwennie. Gwennie might be saintly or devilish as the humor took her, but she was not a bit stuck-up about her looks and she had Annie Vincent's kind, ungrudging heart and Luther Lesley's utter inability to hold any spite. As for Marigold, she and Gwennie had some terrible spats, but they had so much fun between that the fights didn't greatly matter. Though Gwennie had a poisonous little tongue when she got mad and said some things that rankled—especially about Clementine.

Clementine's picture had been left on the orchard room wall when most of Old Grandmother's faded brides had been packed away in the oblivion of the garret. There she hung in the green gloom, with her ivory-white face, her sleek braided flow of hair, her pale beautiful hands and her long-lashed eyes forever entreating the lily. Marigold felt she would not have hated Clementine so much if she had looked squarely and a little arrogantly at you like the other brides—if you could have met her eyes and defied them.

But that averted, indifferent gaze, as if you didn't matter at all—as if what you felt or thought didn't matter at all. Oh, for the others Clementine Lesley might be dead, but for Marigold she was torturingly alive and she knew Father had only married Mother for a housekeeper. All his love belonged to that disdainful Lady of the Lily. And Gwennie, suspecting this secret wound in Marigold's soul, turned the barb in it occasionally by singing the praises of Clementine's picture.

The only faint comfort Marigold had was a hope that if Clementine had lived to be old she might have become enormously fat like her mother up at Harmony village. A good many Lawrences lived in or about Harmony and none of them, it was whispered, cared very much for Lorraine, though they were always painfully polite to her. Marigold knew this, as she knew so many things older folk never dreamed of her knowing, and always felt whenever old Mrs. Lawrence's eye rested on her that she had no right to exist. If she could only have believed thoroughly that Clementine would have looked like her mother when she grew old she would not have been jealous of her.

For old Mrs. Lawrence was a funny old dame, and one is never jealous of funny people.

Mrs. Lawrence was very proud of her resemblance to Queen Victoria and dressed up to it. She had three chins, a bosom like a sheep and a harmless, if irritating, habit of shedding hairpins wherever she went. Her favorite adjective was “Christian,” and she had a very decided dislike to being reminded that she was either fat or old. She constantly wore a brooch with Clementine's hair in it and when she talked of her daughter—as she did very often—she snuffled. In spite of this, Mrs. Lawrence had many good qualities and was a decent old soul enough, as Uncle Klon said.

But Marigold saw only her defects and foibles because that was all she wanted to see in Clementine's mother; and it rejoiced her when Uncle Klon poked fun at Mrs. Lawrence's pet peculiarity of saving all her children's boots. It was said she had a roomful of them—every boot or shoe that her family of four had ever worn from their first little slipper up. Which did nobody any harm and need not have given Marigold such fierce pleasure. But when was jealousy ever reasonable?

2

Uncle Peter's son Royal had married and brought his bride home to Harmony. She was said to be unusually pretty, and even Aunt Josephine had said she was the most exquisite bride she had ever seen. There had been the usual clan jollifications in her honor, and now Uncle Klon and Aunt Marigold were giving a party for her—a “fancy dress” dance where all the young Fry were to be masked. It sounded very interesting to Marigold and very provocative to Gwennie as they listened to Mother and Grandmother talking it over at the supper-table. Both wished intensely that they could see that party. But both knew that they must go right to bed as soon as Mother and Grandmother had gone.

“And be good little girls,” said Grandmother warningly.

“There's no fun in being a good little girl,” said Gwennie, with a pout at Grandmother. “I don't see why we can't go to that party, too.”

“You were not invited,” said Mother.

“You are not old enough to go to parties,” said Grandmother.

“Your day is coming,” comforted Salome.

Uncle Klon came out from Harmony for them in his car—already dressed in his fancy costume—a great, flowered-velvet coat that had belonged to some Great-great across the sea, a real sword, and a powdered wig. With lace ruffles at wrist and breast. Mother and Grandmother were not wearing fancy dress, but Grandmother was very splendid in velvet and Mother very pretty in brown brocade and pearls. And Marigold felt delightfully that it was just like a bit out of a story, and she wished she could go up the hill and tell Sylvia about it. She had never even seen Sylvia since Gwennie came, and there were times when she was consumed with longing for her. But she never went up the hill. Gwennie simply must not find out about Sylvia.

“Run on in, kidlets, and go to bed now,” said Uncle Klon, grinning rather maliciously, because he knew perfectly well how they hated it.

“Don't call me ‘
kidlet
,'” flashed Gwen.

After the car had purred off in the twilight, she sat down on the veranda steps and would not say a word. Such a visitation of silence was rare with Gwennie, but Marigold rather welcomed it. She was glad to sit and dream in the lovely twilight, while Lucifer skulked like a black demon among the flower-beds.

It was not the Lucifer of Old Grandmother's days. That Lucifer had gone where good cats go. But there had been another Lucifer to step into his four shoes, looking so exactly like him that in a few weeks it seemed just the same old Lucifer. There had been a procession of Lucifers and Witches for generations at Cloud of Spruce, all looking so much alike that Phidime and Lazarre thought they were one and the same and concluded they were the Old Lady's devils.

Salome, after milking, came along.

“I'm going to bed.” she said. “I've got a headache. And its time you went, too. There's lemonade and cookies for you in the pantry.”

“Lemonade and cookies,” said Gwennie scornfully, after Salome had gone in, leaving a couple of minxes at large in Cloud of Spruce. “Lemonade and cookies! And they are having all kinds of ices and salads and cakes at the party.”

“There's no use thinking about that,” said Marigold with a sigh. “It's nine o'clock. We might as well go to bed.”

“Bed!
I'm
going to the party.”

Marigold stared.

“The party? But you can't.”

“Maybe I can't. But I will. I've been thinking it all out. We'll just
go
. It's only a mile in—we can easily walk it. We must be dressed up ourselves so that if any one sees us they'll think we belong to the party. There's heaps of things in those chests in the garret and I'll make masks. We won't go in the house—just peep in at the windows and see all the dresses and the fun.”

So far had evil communications corrupted good manners that Marigold felt no qualms of conscience at all. It would certainly be int'resting. And she was quite wild to see that “exquisite bride” and all the wonderful costumes. Uncle Peter's Pete, she had heard, was going as a devil. The only thing that gave her to think was whether they could really get away with it.

“What if Grandmother catches us?” she said.

“A fig for your Grandmother. She won't—and if she does, what then? She can't kill us. Have some gizzard.”

Marigold had lots of “gizzard” and in ten minutes they were in the garret tiptoeing cautiously lest Salome hear them in the retreat of her kitchen chamber. The garret was rather a spooky place by candlelight, and Marigold had never been there after dark before.

Great bunches of dried herbs hung from the nails in the rafters, together with bundles of goose-wings, hanks of yarns and various discarded coats. Grandmother's big loom, where she still wove homespun blankets, was before the window. An old, old piano was in one corner and there was some legend of a ghostly lady who played on it by times. And there was a chest under the eaves filled with silken dresses in which gay girls had danced years ago. Marigold had never seen the contents of that chest, but Gwennie seemed to know all about them. She must have been rummaging, Marigold thought. Gwennie
had
—one rainy day when nobody knew where she was—and she knew what was in the big chest, but she did not know—and neither did Marigold—that the little gown of misty green crêpe with tiny daisies sprinkled over it and a satin girdle with a rhinestone buckle in it, which was lying in a box on the top of the contents of the chest, had been a dress of Clementine's. Marigold knew that Clementine had been buried in her wedding-dress and that old Mrs. Lawrence had taken away the rest of her pretty gowns. But this one had been overlooked; perhaps Mrs. Lawrence did not know it still existed. The first Mrs. Leander had her own reasons for keeping it and it had remained in the box in which she had placed it all those years.

“Here's the very thing for you,” said Gwen. “
I'm
going as a fortune-teller, with this scarlet cloak and hood and the pack of cards. They're all here together—somebody must have worn them once to a fancy ball.”

Marigold fingered the emerald satin of the girdle lovingly. She adored satin.

“But I can't wear this,” she objected. “It's miles too big for me.”

“Put it on,” ordered Gwen. “I can fix it for you. I'm a crackerjack at that. Ma says I'm a born dressmaker. Let's go down to our room. Salome'll hear us creaking about up here.”

Marigold put on the daisy dress, with its pretty, short sleeves of lace and its round low neck. Oh, it
was
pretty even if it were old-fashioned and wrinkled. Marigold was tall for her ten years and Clementine had been small and slight; still the dress was too long—and loose. But resourceful Gwennie, with a paper of safety-pins, worked marvels. The skirt was looped up at intervals all around and the pins hidden under clusters of daisies Gwen got off an old hat and which matched the daisies in the dress admirably.

“Now get your good slippers and pink silk stockings,” commanded Gwen, sprinkling her own cloak and the green dress lavishly with Mother's violet water. “I've got to make our masks.”

Which she proceeded to do, slashing ruthlessly into Old Grandmother's widow “fall” of stiff black crêpe. Then she put on her own red stockings and fixed up a “wand” for herself out of an old umbrella handle with a silvery Christmas-tree ball at the end and a Japanese snake of scarlet paper wreathed around the handle. Nobody could deny that Gwen was past mistress in her own particular brand of magic, and Marigold was lost in admiration of her cleverness. A few minutes later two black-faced figures, one in green and one in red, slipped silently out of Cloud of Spruce and fled along the dark Harmony road, while Salome slept the sleep of the just in the kitchen chamber and Lucifer told the Witch of Endor that he'd be condemned if he ever let that young demon from Rush Hill walk him about the yard on his hind legs again.

3

Marigold, who was never frightened in the dark if she had any one with her, enjoyed the walk to the village. It was a fairy night, with eerie pixie voices in the bracken. Why were the clouds racing across the moonlit sky in such a hurry? To what mysterious sky-tryst were they hastening? An occasional rabbit frisked across the moonlit road. Marigold was half sorry when they reached the village.

Luckily Uncle Klon's house was in the outskirts, so they had no need of traversing the streets. They slipped up the side lane, squirmed through a gap in the privet hedge, boldly walked across the lawn and found themselves at the window of the big room where the dancing was going on. It was open and the blind was up, and they had a full view of the inside.

Marigold caught her breath with delight. Oh, it was fairyland. It was like a little glimpse into another world. For the second time in her life Marigold thought it might be really quite nice to be grown up. She remembered the first time. Long ago, when she had been only six, curled up on the ottoman in the spare room, watching an eighteen-year-old cousin dressing for a dance. When would she be like that? Not for twelve years. She groaned aloud.

“What's the matter, Sugar-pie? Sick?”

“No. It's only—it takes so long to grow up,” sighed Marigold.

“Not so long as you think,” remarked Grandmother, passing through the hall.

And now again, for a moment, Marigold felt that it really took too long to grow up.

The room was rosily lighted by a gay enormous Chinese lantern hung from the ceiling. The floor was filled with dancers in the most wonderful dresses. There was gaiety in the very air. Lovely low laughter was everywhere, drifting out over the lawn in front and the flower-garden behind. Aunt Marigold's dog was howling heart-brokenly to the music in his kennel. Such flowers—such lights—such music—such dresses. Most of the younger guests were masked but few of the older ones were, and Marigold liked best to watch them because she knew them. There was Aunt Anne, in gray lace over amber silk—Marigold had never seen Aunt Anne so magnificent before! Cousin Jen, with a diamond wreath in her hair, and Cousin Barbara, who always had runs in her stockings, and Cousin Madge, who was the best dancer in the Lesley clan. Her very slippers would have danced by themselves the night through. Aunt Emma, who still wore her hair pompadour and old Uncle Percy, whose wife had her hair bobbed three months before he ever noticed it. Old Uncle Nathaniel, with his great shock of gray hair reaching to his shoulders and looking, so Uncle Klon was wont to say, like a lion that had eaten a Christian who disagreed with him. And, sitting maskless by Aunt Marigold in the palm corner, a creature so lovely, in her gown of pale pink chiffon embroidered with silver, with her hair folded about her head like a golden hood, that Marigold felt at once that this was the “exquisite bride.”
Exquisite
was the word. Marigold could hardly drag her eyes from her. It had been worth it all, just to see her.