But the other side of the harbour—”over the bay” — continued to hold a lure for Marigold. Everything, she felt sure, would be different over there. Even the people who lived there had a fascinating name—”over-the-bay-ers” — which when Marigold had been very young, she thought was “over-the-bears.”
Marigold had been down to the gulf shore on the other side of the dreamy dunes once, with Uncle Klon and Aunt Marigold. They had lingered there until the sunken sun had sucked all the rosy light out of the great blue bowl of the sky and twilight came down over the crash and the white turmoil of the breakers. For the tide was high and the winds were out and the sea was thundering its mighty march of victory. Marigold would have been terrified if she had not had Uncle Klon’s lean brown hand to hold. But with him to take the edge off those terrible thrills it had been all pure rapture.
Next to the harbour Marigold loved the big spruce wood on the hill — though she had been up there only twice in her life.
As far back as she could remember that spruce hill had held an irresistible charm for her. She would sit on the steps of Old Grandmother’s room and look up it by the hour so long and so steadily that Young Grandmother would wonder uneasily if the child were just “right.” There had been a half-wit two generations back in the Winthrops.
The hill was so high. Long ago she had used to think that if she could get up on that hill she could touch the sky. Even yet she thought if she were there and gave a little spring she might land right in heaven. Nothing lived there except rabbits and squirrels — and perhaps “de leetle green folk,” of whom Lazarre had told her. But beyond it — ah, beyond it — was the Hidden Land. It seemed to Marigold she had always called it that — always known about it. The beautiful, wonderful Hidden Land. Oh, to see it, just to climb up that hill to the very top and gaze upon it. And yet when Mother asked her one day if she would like a walk up the hill Marigold had shrunk back and exclaimed,
“Oh, Mother, the hill is so high. If we got to the top we’d be above everything. I’d rather stay down here with things.”
Mother had laughed and humoured her. But one evening, only two months later, Marigold had daringly done it alone. The lure suddenly proved stronger than the dread. Nobody was around to forbid her or call her back. She walked boldly up the long flight of flat sandstone steps that led right up the middle of the orchard, set into the grass. She paused at the first step to kiss a young daffodil goodnight — for there were daffodils all about that orchard. Away beyond, the loveliest rose-hued clouds were hanging over the spruces. They had caught the reflection of the west, but Marigold thought they shone so because they looked on the Hidden Land — the land she would see in a moment if her courage only held out. She could be brave so long as it was not dark. She must get up the hill — and back — before it was dark. The gallant small figure ran up the steps to the old lichen-covered fence and sagging green gate where seven slim poplars grew. But she did not open it. Somehow she could not go right into that spruce wood. Lazarre had told her a story of that spruce wood — or some other spruce wood. Old Fidèle the caulker had been cutting down a tree there and his axe was dull and he swore, “Devil take me,” he said, “if I don’t t’row dis dam axe in de pond.” “An’ de devil took heem.” Lazarre was dreadfully in earnest.
“Did any one see it?” asked Marigold, round-eyed.
“No; but dey see de hoof-prints,” said Lazarre conclusively. “And stomp in de groun’ roun’ de tree. An’ you leesten now — where did Fidèle go if de devil didn’t take heem? Nobody never see heem again roun’ dese parts.”
So no spruce wood for Marigold. In daylight she never really believed the devil had carried off Fidèle, but one is not so incredulous after the sun goes down. And Marigold did not really want to see the devil, though she thought to herself that it would be int’resting.
She ran along the fence to the corner of the orchard where the spruces stopped. How cool and velvety the young grass felt. It felt green. But in the Hidden Land it would be ever so much greener—”living green,” as one of Salome’s hymns said. She scrambled through a lucky hole in the fence, ran out into Mr. Donkin’s wheat-stubble and looked eagerly — confidently for the Hidden Land.
For a moment she looked — tears welled up in her eyes — her lips trembled — she almost cried aloud in bitterness of soul.
There was no Hidden Land!
Nothing before her but fields and farmhouses and barns and groves — just the same as along the road to Harmony. Nothing of the wonderful secret land of her dreams. Marigold turned; she must rush home and find Mother and cry — cry — cry! But she stopped, gazing with a suddenly transfigured face at the sunset over Harmony Harbour.
She had never seen the whole harbour at one time before; and the sunset was a rare one even in that island of wonderful sunsets. Marigold plunged her eyes into those lakes of living gold and supernal crimson and heavenly apple-green — into those rose-coloured waters — those far-off purple seas — and felt as if she were drowning ecstatically in loveliness. Oh, there was the Hidden Land — there beyond those shining hills — beyond that great headland that cut the radiant sea at the harbours mouth — there in that dream city of towers and spires whose gates were of pearl. It was not lost to her. How foolish she had been to fancy it just over the hill. Of course it couldn’t be there — so near home. But she knew where it was now. The horrible disappointment and the sense of bitter loss that was far worse than the disappointment, had all vanished in that moment of sheer ecstasy above the world. She knew.
It was growing dark. She could see the lights of Cloud of Spruce blooming out in the dusk below her. And the night was creeping out of the spruces at her. She looked once timidly in that direction — and there, just over a little bay of bracken at the edge of the wood, beckoning to her from a copse — a Little White Girl. Marigold waved back before she saw it was only a branch of wild, white plum-blossom, wind-shaken. She ran back to the orchard and down the steps to meet Mother at the door of Old Grandmother’s room.
“Oh, Mother, it’s so nice to come home at bedtime,” she whispered, clutching the dear warm hand.
“Where have you been, child?” ask Young Grandmother rather sternly.
“Up on the hill.”
“You must not go there alone at this time of night,” said Young Grandmother.
Oh, but she had been there once. And she had seen the Hidden Land.
Then she had gone up the hill with Mother this spring — only a few weeks ago — to pick arbutus. They had had a lovely time and found a spring there, with ferns thick around its untrampled edges — a delicate dim thing, half shadow, all loveliness. Marigold had pulled the ferns aside and peeped into it — had seen her own face looking up at her. No, not her own face. The Little Girl who lived in the spring, of course, and came out on moonlit nights to dance around it. Marigold knew naught of Grecian myth or Anglo-Saxon folk-lore but the heart of childhood has its own lovely interpretation of nature in every age and clime, and Marigold was born knowing those things that are hidden forever from the wise and prudent and sceptical.
She and Mother had wandered along dear little paths over gnarled roots. They had found a beautiful smooth-trunked beech or two. They had walked on sheets of green moss velvety enough for the feet of queens. Later on, Mother told her, there would be June-bells and trilliums and wild orchids and lady’s slippers there for the seeking. Later still, strawberries out in the clearings at the back.
“When I get big I’m coming here every day,” said Marigold. She thought of the evening so long ago — a whole year — when she had seen for a moment the Little White Girl. It couldn’t have been a plum-bough. Perhaps some day she would see her again.
3
Lucifer was prowling about the bed of striped ribbon-grass, giving occasional mysterious pounces into it. The Witch of Endor was making some dark magic of her own on the white gate-post. They were both older than Marigold, who felt therefore that they were uncannily aged. Lazarre had conf
ided to her his belief that they would live as long as the Old Lady did. “Dey tells her everyt’ing — everyt’ing,” Lazarre had said. “Haven’ I seen dem, sittin’ dare on her bed, wi’ deir tail hangin’ down, a-talkin’ to her lak dey was Chreestian? An’ every tam dat Weetch she catch a mouse, don’ she go for carry it to de Old Lady to see? You take care what you do ‘fore dose cats. I wouldn’t lak to be de chap dat would hurt one of dem. What dem fellers don’ know ain’t wort’ knowin’.” Marigold loved them but held them in awe. Their unfailing progeny gave her more delight. Little furry creatures were always lying asleep on the sunwarm grasses or frisking in yard and orchard. Ebon balls of fluff. Though not all ebon, alas. The number of spotted and striped kittens around led Uncle Klon to have his serious doubts about the Witch’s morals. But he had the decency to keep his doubts to himself, and Marigold liked the striped kittens best — undisturbed by any thought of bends sinister. Creatures with such sweet little faces could have no dealings with the devil she felt quiet sure, whatever their parents might be up to.
Lazarre had given over fiddling and was going home — his little cottage down in “the hollow,” where he had a black-eyed wife and half a dozen black-eyed children. Marigold watched him crossing the field, carrying something tied up in a red hanky, whistling gaily, as he was always doing when not fiddling, his head and shoulders stooped because he was continually in such a hurry that they were always several inches in advance of his feet. Marigold was very fond of Lazarre, who had been choreman at Cloud of Spruce before she was born and so was part of the things that always had been and always would be. She liked the quick, cordial twinkle in his black eyes and the gleam of his white teeth in his brown face. He was very different from Phidime Gautier, the big blacksmith in the Hollow, of whom Marigold went in positive dread, with his fierce black moustaches you could hang your hat on. There was an unproved legend that he ate a baby every other day. But Lazarre wasn’t like that. He was kind and gentle and gay.
She was sure Lazarre couldn’t hurt anything. To be sure there was that horrible tale of his killing pigs. But Marigold never believed it. She knew Lazarre couldn’t kill pigs — at least, not pigs he was acquainted with.
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 grey 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 int’resting. 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 o
f 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 recognise 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, realised. 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!
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 455
