Salome was singing lustily in the pantry, where she was washing dishes. Salome couldn’t sing, but she always sang and Marigold liked to hear her, especially at twilight. “Shall we ga-a-a-ther at the ri-ver. The bew-tiful-the bew-tiful river?” warbled Salome. And Marigold saw the beautiful river, looking like the harbor below Cloud of Spruce. Lazarre was playing his fiddle behind the copse of young spruces back of the apple-barn—the old brown fiddle that his great-great-great-grandfather had brought from Grand Pré. Perhaps Evangeline had danced to it. Aunt Marigold had told Marigold the story of Evangeline. Young Grandmother and Mother and Aunt Marigold and Uncle Klon were in Old Grandmother’s room talking over clan chit-chat together. A bit of gossip, Old Grandmother always averred, was an aid to digestion. Everybody Marigold loved was near her. She hugged her brown knees with delight, and thought with a vengeance.
2
Marigold had lived her six years, knowing no world but Harmony Harbor and Cloud of Spruce. All her clan loved her and petted her, though some of them occasionally squashed her for her own good. And Marigold loved them all—even those she hated she loved as part of her clan. And she loved Cloud of Spruce. How lucky she had happened to be born there. She loved everything and everybody about it. Tonight everything seemed to drift through her consciousness in a dreamy, jumbled procession of delight, big and little things, past and present, all tangled up together.
The pigeons circling over the old apple-barn; the apple-barn itself—such an odd old barn with a tower and oriel window like a church—and the row of funny little hemlocks beyond it. “Look at those hemlocks,” Uncle Klon had said once. “Don’t they look like a row of old-maid schoolteachers with their fingers up admonishing a class of naughty little boys.” Marigold always thought of them so after that and walked past them in real half-delicious fear. What if they should suddenly shake their fingers so at her? She would die of it, she knew. But it would be int’resting.
The hemlocks were not the only mysterious trees about Cloud of Spruce. That lilac-bush behind the well, for example. Sometimes it was just lilac-bush. And sometimes, especially in the twilight or early dawn, it was a nodding old woman knitting. It was. And the spruce-tree down at the shore which in twilight or on stormy winter days looked just like a witch leaning out from the bank, her hair streaming wildly behind her. Then there were trees that talked—Marigold heard them. “Come, come,” the pines at the right of the orchard were always calling. “We have something to tell you,” whispered the maples at the gate. “Isn’t it enough to look at us?” crooned the white birches along the road side of the garden, which Young Grandmother had planted when she came to Cloud of Spruce as a bride. And those Lombardies that kept such stately watch about the old house. At night the wind wandered through them like a grieving spirit. Elfin laughter and fitful moans sounded in their boughs. You might say what you liked but Marigold would never believe that those Lombardies were just trees.
The old garden that faced the fair blue harbor, with its white gate set midway, where darling flowers grew and kittens ran beautiful brief little pilgrimages before they were given away—or vanished mysteriously. It had all the beauty of old gardens where sweet women have aforetime laughed and wept. Some bit of old clan history was bound up with almost every clump and walk in it, and already Marigold knew most of it. The things that Young Grandmother and Mother would not tell her Salome would, and the things that Salome would not Lazarre would.
The road outside the gate—one of the pleasant red roads of “the Island.” To Marigold, a long red road of mystery. On the right hand it ran down to the windy seafields at the harbor’s mouth and stopped there—as if, thought Marigold, the sea had bitten it off. On the left it ran through a fern valley, up to the shadowy crest of a steep hill with eager little spruce-trees running up the side of it as if trying to catch up with the big ones at the top. And over it to a new world beyond where there was a church and a school and the village of Harmony. Marigold loved that hill road because it was full of rabbits. You could never go up it without seeing some of the darlings. There was room in Marigold’s heart for all the rabbits of the world. She had horrible suspicions that Lucifer caught baby rabbits—and ate them. Lazarre had as good as given that dark secret away in his rage over some ruined cabbages in the kitchen-garden. “Dem devil rabbit,” he had stormed. “I wish dat Lucifer, he eat dem all!” Marigold couldn’t feel the same to Lucifer after that, though she kept on loving him, of course. Marigold always kept on loving—and hating—when she had once begun. “She’s got that much Lesley in her anyhow,” said Uncle Klon.
The harbor, with its silent mysterious ships that came and went; Marigold loved it the best of all the outward facts of her life—better, as yet, than even the wonderful green cloud of spruce on the hill eastward that gave her home its name. She loved it when it was covered with little dancing ripples like songs. She loved it when its water was smooth as blue silk; she loved it when summer showers spun shining threads of rain below its western clouds; she loved it when its lights blossomed out in the blue of summer dusks and the bell of the Anglican Church over the bay rang faint and sweet. She loved it when the mist mirages changed it to some strange enchanted haven of “fairylands forlorn”; she loved it when it was ruffled in rich dark crimson under autumn sunsets; she loved it when silver sails went out of it in the strange white wonder of dawn; but she loved it best on late still afternoons, when it lay like a great gleaming mirror, all faint, prismatic colors like the world in a soap-bubble. It was so nice and thrilly to stand down on the wharf and see the trees upside down in the water and a great blue sky underneath you. And what if you couldn’t stick on but fell down into that sky? Would you fall through it?
And she loved the purple-hooded hills that cradled it—those long dark hills that laughed to you and beckoned—but always kept some secret they would never tell.
“What is over the hills, Mother?” she had asked Mother once.
“Many things—wonderful things—heart-breaking things,” Mother had answered with a sigh.
“I’ll go and find them all sometime,” Marigold had said confidently.
And then Mother had sighed again.
But the other side of the harbor—“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 harbor 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 humored 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 anyone 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 Harbor.
She had never seen the whole harbor 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-colored 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 harbor’s 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?” asked 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 skeptical.
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 someday 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 confided to her his belief that they would live as long as the Old Lady did. “Dey tells her everything—everything,” 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 quite 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 mustache 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.