“Grandmother, please, can I have the key of The Magic Door?” asked Marigold one morning.
Grandmother looked at her with cold eyes.
“I have locked that door and it is to remain locked,” she said deliberately. “I find that I often forget to lock it at night, and that is very dangerous.”
“But, Grandmother,” exclaimed Marigold, “I must have the key. You know I can’t see Sylvia unless I go that way.”
“Then you must get along without seeing her,” said Grandmother immovably.
Marigold did not plead or coax. She knew quite well that no pleading would avail with Grandmother—who had been “one of the stubborn Blaisdells,” as Salome said, before she married into the Lesley clan. But she went away with eyes that were stripped of laughter. Grandmother gazed after her triumphantly. This would put an end to all nonsense.
It did. Marigold made one effort to find Sylvia. She went out through the hall door, up the orchard and through the Green Gate. She shut her eyes—said The Rhyme—opened them.
There was no Sylvia.
Marigold crept back to the house—a pathetic, defeated little figure.
For a week Marigold moped—so Grandmother termed it. Grandmother was very good to her. She let her help cook—Salome being away on one of her rare vacations—shell lovely walnuts with kinkly meats, seed raisins, slice citron peel; even—oh, bliss of happier days!—beat eggs. But Marigold seemed interested in nothing. She sat about a great deal in a big chair on the veranda, looking out on the harbor, with a smileless little face.
One night Grandmother discovered that Marigold had gone to bed without saying her prayers. Horrified, Grandmother made Marigold get right up and say them. But when Marigold got into bed again she looked at Grandmother with sad, defiant eyes.
“My soul didn’t pray a bit,” she said.
When another week had passed, Grandmother began to worry about Marigold. All was not well with the child. She was growing thin and pale.
“It’s the heat,” said Grandmother. “If it would only get cooler she would be all right.”
Grandmother would not even let herself look at the idea that Marigold was fretting for Sylvia. It was absurd to suppose that a child would become ill because of the imaginary loss of an imaginary playmate.
She went into Harmony and bought Marigold a magnificent doll—almost as big and beautiful as Alicia. Marigold thanked her, played with it a little, then laid it aside.
“Why don’t you like your doll?” asked Grandmother severely.
“It’s a very nice doll,” said Marigold listlessly. “But it isn’t alive. Sylvia was.”
It was the first time she had spoken of Sylvia. Grandmother’s brow grew dark.
“You are a very ungrateful little girl,” said Grandmother.
Marigold sighed. She was sorry Grandmother thought her ungrateful. But she did not really care very much. When you are horribly tired you can’t care very much about anything. There was no joy in waking up any longer. The bluebells in the orchard had no message for her and she had forgotten the language of the roses. The days seemed endless and the nights—the lonely, black, dreadful nights when the windows rattled so terribly and the wind sang and sobbed so lonesomely in the tree-tops around Cloud of Spruce—worse than endless. There was nothing then but a great, empty, aching loneliness. No sweet medicine of Mother’s kisses. No Sylvia. But one night Marigold heard distant music.
“I think it is Sylvia singing on the hill,” she said, when Grandmother asked her sharply what she was listening to.
Grandmother was vexed with herself that she couldn’t help recalling that silly old superstition of Salome’s that angels sing to children about to die. But Grandmother was really alarmed by now. The child was going to skin and bone. She hadn’t laughed for a month. The house seemed haunted by her sad little face. What was to be done? Lorraine must not be worried.
Grandmother got Marigold a lovely new dress of silvery silk and a necklace of beautiful pale green beads. Nobody in the whole Lesley clan had such a beautiful necklace. Marigold put it on and thanked Grandmother dutifully, and went away and sat on her chair on the veranda. Grandmother gave Marigold her own way about everything—except the one thing that really mattered. But Grandmother did not for a moment suppose that mattered at all. And she certainly wasn’t going to give in about a thing that didn’t matter.
Marigold pined and paled more visibly every day. Grandmother was at her wit’s end.
“If only Horace’s wife was home,” she said helplessly.
But Uncle Klon and Aunt Marigold were far away at the Coast, so Dr. Moorhouse was called in—very secretly so that no rumor of it might reach Lorraine—and Dr. Moorhouse couldn’t find anything wrong with the child. A little run down. The weather was hot. Plenty of sleep, food, and fresh air. He left some pills for her: Marigold took them as obediently for Grandmother as for Old Grandmother, but she grew no better.
“I’ll soon be sleeping in the spare room, won’t I, Grandmother?” she said one night.
Grandmother’s old face grew suddenly older. The spare room!
“Don’t be foolish, dear,” she said very gently. “You are not going to die. You’ll soon be all right.”
“I don’t want to be all right,” said Marigold. “When I die I can go through The Magic Door without any key.”
Grandmother could not sleep that night. She recalled what Great-Aunt Elizabeth had once said of Marigold. “She is too glad to live. Such gladness is not of earth.” But then, Aunt Elizabeth had always been an old pessimist. Always predicting somebody’s death. Of course she hit it once in a while, but not a tenth of her predictions ever came true. There was no need to worry over Marigold. The child had always been perfectly healthy. Though not exactly robust. Rather too sensitive—like Lorraine. The weather was so hot. As soon as it cooled, her appetite would come back. But still Grandmother could not sleep. She decided that if Marigold did not soon begin to improve, Lorraine would have to be sent for.
3
Dr. Adam Clow, professor of psychology in a famous university, was talking over family folklore with Grandmother, on the veranda of Cloud of Spruce, looking out into a blue dimness that was the harbor but which to him, just now, was a fair, uncharted land where he might find all his lost Aprils. Only the loveliest of muted sounds were heard—the faint whisper of friendly trees, the half-heard, half-felt moan of the surf, the airiest sigh of wind. Down the road the witching lilt of some invisible musician who was playing a fiddle at Lazarre’s.
And the purr of black cats humped up on the steps—cats who must have been at Cloud of Spruce forever and would be there forever, changeless, ageless creatures that they were. What did the world look like to a cat, speculated Dr. Clow? Know what he might about psychology he did not know that.
Dr. Clow was a very old friend of Grandmother’s, and this visit was a great event to her. There was nobody on earth for whose opinion she had such respect as she had for Adam’s. He was one of the few people left to call her Marian—to remember her as “one of the handsome Blaisdell girls.”
Adam Clow was that rare thing—a handsome old man, having lived a good life so long that he was very full of the beauty of the spirit. His dark eyes were still softly luminous and his thin, delicately cut, finely wrinkled face rather dreamy and remote. But his smile was vivid and youthful and his mouth showed strength and tenderness and humor.
He came once every year to hear the fir-trees whispering on the hills of home. Here where all his race and all his friends, save Marian Blaisdell, had vanished—here was still “home.” Here still on purple evenings and starlit midnights and white dawns the little waves murmured and sighed on the harbor shore. And of all those who had once listened to them with him was left only Marian Blaisdell—handsome Marian, who had a certain queen’s loveliness about her still. With her he could talk about charming vanished hous
eholds and the laughing girls of long ago and old summers so sweet they could not wholly die. He shuddered when he thought of a recent evening spent with a former schoolmate who prided herself on keeping up with the times and talked to him the whole time about eugenics and chromosomes and the growing menace of the feebleminded. Dr. Adam Clow thanked his stars for a vine-hung veranda and a woman who had grown old gracefully.
“Oh, well, I haven’t got to wheelchairs and gruel yet,” said Grandmother complacently.
They talked of the old days and the new days, and watched the moon rising over the old fields they knew. And Dr. Clow told her all the jokes he could think of. He was the only person in the world who dared tell jokes to Grandmother. And finally Grandmother—proud, reserved Grandmother—found herself telling him all about Marigold—who was asleep in her little room with tears still gemming her lashes. She had not taken any interest in Dr. Clow. He was Grandmother’s meat and, like Grandmother, must long since have forgotten the way to fairyland.
Grandmother had to tell somebody. Adam’s coming seemed providential. She had always found it easy to tell things to him—always, until now. To her amazement, she found it incredibly hard to tell Adam Clow that she had locked The Magic Door.
“She doesn’t seem to want to get better,” she concluded helplessly.
“‘A wounded spirit who can bear’?” quoted Adam Clow softly.
“I don’t understand,” said Grandmother in a hurt tone. “I—I think I’ve been very kind to Marigold.”
“And I think,” said Adam Clow rather sternly, “that she is dying of a broken heart.”
Grandmother began to say “Bosh,” and stopped. One didn’t say bosh to doctors of psychology.
“You don’t really mean to say you think she has got so ill because she can’t see that Sylvia of hers anymore? Or imagines she can’t?”
Dr. Clow put his slender finger-tips together.
“I think I might talk a great deal of wise jargon about a neurosis caused by a suppressed desire for her playmate,” he said. “But I won’t. I simply advise you to give her the key of The Magic Door.”
“But—Adam!” Grandmother could not give in so easily. “Is it right to encourage her in those pretenses—those falsehoods—”
“They are not falsehoods. They are truths to her. She sees things invisible to us. She is a queen in the lovely Kingdom of Make-Believe. She is not trying to deceive anybody. She has the wonderful gift of creation in an unusual degree. It is such a pity that she will lose it as she grows older—that she will have to forego its wonder and live, like us, in the light of common day. Has this never occurred to you, Marian?”
No, it hadn’t. But—Grandmother gave a little sigh—of surrender. Dr. Clow stood up.
“I must be going. We have sat up terribly late for old folks.”
“I’m sorry you have to walk to Harmony,” said Grandmother. “Our horse is too lame to drive just now—and Horace is away—so his car—”
“I don’t like a car after dark. In a car you can never feel the charm of the soft enfolding night. I want to walk. It keeps me limber. Well, it’s good-bye for another year. I must go back tomorrow and begin work. And if I have to slip off this ‘robe of flesh’ before next summer I’ll save up my jokes to tell you in eternity. After all, there’s nothing quite so satisfying as an old friendship, is there, Marian? As for Marigold—the earth has grown very old for us, Marian. Let us be thankful it is still young and full of magic for Marigold.”
4
The next morning after breakfast Grandmother silently laid the key of the orchard door by Marigold’s blue bowl. Marigold lifted incredulous eyes.
“Oh, Grandmother! May I—may I?”
“Yes,” said Grandmother curtly. In spite of Adam’s fine phrases she did not relish defeat by this puss of a Marigold. And there was Lucifer cocking an insolent yellow eye at her, as if he were hugely amused over the whole affair.
Marigold stood still for a moment, transfigured. Her face was as blithe as the day. It was as if a little shower of joy had rained down upon her out of the sky. She flew through the orchard room—through The Magic Door—through the blue-eye grass of the orchard as if there were some Atalanta wizardry in her feet. Through the Green Gate. For another moment she stood, almost afraid. Suppose Sylvia. Then she shut her eyes and said her Rhyme.
5
Grandmother stood in The Magic Door at twilight. There was a pale moon-glow behind the cloud of spruce. There was a dance of great plumy boughs in the western wind. And there was a sound not heard in the orchard for a long time—the sound of Marigold’s laughter as she waved goodnight to Sylvia over the Green Gate.
CHAPTER 8
“It”
1
Mother was home—pink-cheeked and rested and well—and Marigold was going to Blue Water Beach to stay from Friday evening to Sunday night. In other words, a weekend, though that expression had not yet penetrated to Cloud of Spruce. And Marigold was delighted for several good reasons. The best reason was that she would see Nancy—fascinating Nancy of the brown eyes and russet hair; and not only see her but play with her—play with Nancy’s beautiful set of dishes kept in the little square box-cupboard in the wall, with the glass door, and not only play with her but sleep with her two whole nights in her fascinating little room, where there was a dressing-table with a lovely frill of sheer white muslin over a pink lining, and a turquoise blue jug and basin with fluted edges, and peacocks on the wallpaper. They would talk delicious little secrets which nobody in the world but their small selves knew. Aunt Stasia’s house was near a railroad, and it was such thrilly fun to watch the lighted trains go by in the night, like great dragons breathing smoke and fire.
Then there was to be a party on Saturday afternoon at Lily Johnson’s, just across the road from Aunt Stasia’s, to which Marigold was invited, and she had the loveliest new dress for it.
Moreover, Blue Water Beach was in that realm of magic “over the bay,” where at sunset there were dim old shores of faded gold and dusk. Who knew but that some time she might actually get down to Blue Water Point and see what was beyond it—the Hidden Land, which she had longed all her life to see? She had never dared to ask anyone what was beyond Blue Water Point for fear she should be told that there were only the same red coves and headlands and blue silk water that there were on this side of it. Surely there must be something more than that if one could only reach that far purple misty outpost of the “fairylands forlorn” Aunt Marigold talked about. As long as Marigold didn’t know there wasn’t, she could still dream that dear dream.
In the third place, she wanted to wipe out the memory of that old disgrace three years ago, when she had behaved so terribly at Uncle Paul’s. Uncle Paul always ragged her about it every time he saw her, and Aunt Flora had never really forgiven her. To be sure, they had to admit that if Marigold had been the good and proper child she should have been, Martin Richard’s house would have burned down and Frank Lesley and Hilda Wright would probably never have married each other. Still, Marigold knew she had behaved badly and she burned for a chance to redeem herself.
Standing on the veranda of Cloud of Spruce, Marigold could see three houses in a row over the bay. Three little white dots only six miles away as the crow flew, but nearly fifteen when you had to drive around the Head of the Bay. Though there was a delightful possibility that Uncle Klon just back from the Coast would have his new motor-boat in time to run her over Friday evening.
The middle dot was Aunt Stasia’s house—an int’resting house—an unexpected kind of house; like one of those houses in dreams where you are forever discovering new, fascinating rooms; a house where there was red flannel in the glass lamps; a house with a delightful, uncared-for garden where gnarled old apple-trees bent over plots of old-fashioned flowers—thickets of sweet clover, white and fragrant, beds of mint and southernwood, honeysuckles and blush roses; and where the
re was an old mossy path running up to the ivy-grown front door. Oh, Blue Water Beach was a charming spot, and Marigold couldn’t eat or sleep properly for a week because of looking forward to her week-end there.
Of course, this world being as it is, there were one or two small flies in her ointment. Aunt Stasia herself now. Marigold always felt a little frightened of Aunt Stasia—who wasn’t really an aunt but only a cousin. Aunt Stasia of the tragic, wrinkled face, where nothing was left of her traditional beauty but her large dark eyes. Aunt Stasia who always wore black and a widow’s veil and never, never smiled. Marigold supposed you couldn’t smile if just a few minutes after you had been married, your husband had been killed by a flash of lightning. But Marigold sometimes wondered, supposing such a thing happened to her, if she wouldn’t have to smile now and then—after years and years had passed, of course. There were so many things in the world to smile at.
Then, too, Aunt Stasia was—fussy. In spite of her romantic and tragic airs, Aunt Stasia was very fussy. A crumb on the carpet unfitted her for the day. A fly on the ceiling sent her to bed with a headache. If you got a spot on the tablecloth, Aunt Stasia looked at you as if you had broken all the Ten at once. Marigold knew she would have to be exceedingly proper and perfect at Blue Water Beach if she did not want to smirch the honor of Cloud of Spruce. She liked gentle, kitteny Cousin Teresa better. Cousin Teresa was Aunt Stasia’s sister, but she was never called Aunt. There was nothing auntish about her. When Aunt Stasia wasn’t around Cousin Teresa could be just like a little girl herself. But then Aunt Stasia mostly was around.