“Was Great-Grandfather a handsome man?” asked Marigold.
“Handsome? Handsome? Every one was handsome a hundred years ago. I don’t know if he was handsome or not. I only know he was my man from the moment I first set eyes on him. It was at a dinner-party. He was there with Janet Churchill. She thought she had him hooked. She always hated me. I had gold slippers on that night that were too tight for me. I kicked them off under the table for a bit of ease. Never found one of them again. I knew Janet was responsible for it. But I got even with her. I took her beau. It wasn’t hard. She was a black velvet beauty of a girl — far prettier than I was — but she kept all her goods in the show-window. Where there is no mystery there is no romance. Remember that, Marigold.”
“Did you and Great-Grandfather live here when you were married?”
“Yes. He built Cloud of Spruce and brought me here. We were quite happy. Of course we quarrelled now and then. And once he swore at me. I just swore back at him. It horrified him so he never set me such a bad example again. The worst quarrel we ever had was when he spilled soup over my purple silk dress. I always believed he did it on purpose because he didn’t like the dress. He has been dead up there in South Harmony graveyard for forty years, but if he were here now I’d like to slap his face for that dress.”
“How did you get even with him?” asked Marigold, knowing very well Old Grandmother had got even.
Old Grandmother laughed until she had hardly enough breath left to speak.
“I told him that since he had ruined my dress I’d go to church next Sunday in my petticoat. And I did.”
“Oh, Grandmother.” Marigold thought this was going too far.
“Oh, I wore a long silk coat over it. He never knew till we were in our pew. When I sat down the coat fell open in front and he saw the petticoat — a bright Paddy-green it was. Oh, his face — I can see it yet.”
Old Grandmother rocked herself to and fro on the stone bench in a convulsion of mirth.
“I pulled the coat together. But I don’t think your great-grandfather got much good of that sermon. When it was over he took me by the arm and marched me down the aisle and out to our buggy. No hanging round to talk gossip that day. He never spoke all the way home — sat there with his mouth primmed up. In fact he never said a word about it at all — but he never could bear green the rest of his life. And it was my color. But the next time I got a green dress he gave our fat old washerwoman a dress off the same piece. So of course I couldn’t wear the dress, and I never dared get green again. After all, it took a clever person to get the better of your great-grandfather in the long run. But that was the only serious quarrel we ever had, though we used to squabble for a few years over the bread. He wanted the slices cut thick and I wanted them thin. It spoiled a lot of meals for us.”
“Why couldn’t you have each cut them to suit yourselves?”
Old Grandmother chuckled.
“No, no. That would have been giving in on a trifle. It’s harder to do that than give in on something big. Of course we worked it out like that after we had so many children the question was to get enough bread for the family, thick or thin. But to the end of his life there were times when he would snort when I cut a lovely thin paper-like slice, and times when I honestly couldn’t help sniffing when he carved off one an inch thick.”
“I like bread thin,” said Marigold, sympathising with Old Grandmother.
“But if you marry a man who likes it thick — and I know now that every proper man does — let him have it thick from the start. Don’t stick on trifles, Marigold. The slices of bread didn’t worry me when your great-grandfather fell in love with his second cousin, Mary Lesley. She always tried to flirt with every male creature in sight. Simply couldn’t leave the men alone. She wasn’t handsome but she carried herself like a queen, so people thought she was one. It’s a useful trick, Marigold. You might remember it. But don’t flirt. Either you hurt yourself or you hurt some one else.”
“Didn’t you flirt?” asked Marigold slyly.
“Yes. That’s why I’m telling you not to. For the rest — take what God sends you. That was a bad time while it lasted. But he came back. They generally come back if you have sense enough to keep still and wait — as I had, glory be. The only time I broke loose was the night of Charlie Blaisdell’s wedding. Alec sat in a corner and talked to Mary all the evening. I flew out of the house and walked the six miles home in a thin evening dress and satin shoes. It was in March. It should have killed me, of course — but here I am at ninety-nine tough and tasty. And Alec never missed me! Thought I’d gone home with Abe Lesley’s crowd. Oh, well, he came to his senses when Mary dropped him for something fresher. But I can’t say I was ever very fond of Mary Lesley after that. She was a mischief-maker, anyhow, always blowing old jealousies into a flame for the fun of it.
“I got on very well with the rest of the clan, though the in-laws were mostly very stupid, poor things. Alec’s mother didn’t approve of us having such a big family. She said it kept Alec’s nose to the grindstone. I had twins twice just to spite her, but we got on very well for all that. And Alec’s brother Sam was a terrible bore. Nothing ever happened to him. He never even fell in love. Died when he was sixty, in his sleep. It used to make me mad to see any one wasting life like that. Paul was a black sheep. Always got drunk on every solemn or awful occasion. Got drunk at Ruth Lesley’s wedding — she was married from here — and upset two stands of bees over there by the apple-barn just as the bridal party came out here to the orchard to be married. That was the liveliest wedding I was ever at. Never shall I forget old Minister Wood flying up those steps pursued by bees. Talk about ghosts!”
Old Grandmother laughed until she had to wipe the tears from her eyes.
“Poor Ruth. She was so stung up she looked like a bride with the smallpox. Oh, well, she had only about half a brain, anyway. She always threw her arms about her husband in public when she wanted to ask him some small favor. How red and furious he got! And he always refused. You’d have thought she’d have learned sense in time. Some women never do. Be sure you have some sense, Marigold, when it comes to handling the men.”
“Tell me some more stories, Grandmother,” entreated Marigold.
“Child, I could tell you stories all night. This orchard is full of them. Up there by the scabby apple-tree Bess Lesley swooned because Alexander McKay asked her to marry him too suddenly. People ‘swooned’ in my day—’fainted’ in your grandmother’s. Now they don’t do either. But what a lot of fun they miss. Alexander thought Bess was dead — that he’d killed her with his abruptness. We found him on his knees by her, tearing his hair and shrieking blue murder. He thought I was a brute because I threw a dipperful of water over her. She came to very quickly — her curls were only paper ones — and such a looking creature as she was, with them hanging limp about her face and a complexion like a tallow candle. But she had a wonderful figure. It seems to me the girls look like sticks nowadays. Alexander clasped her in his arms and implored her to forgive him. She forgave him — and married him — but she never forgave me. Talking of ghosts — they had a haunted door in their house. Always found open no matter how it was shut and locked.”
“Do you really believe that, Grandmother?”
“Of course. Always believe things like that. If you don’t believe things you’ll never have any fun. The more things you can believe the more interesting life is, as you say yourself. Too much incredulity makes it a poor thing. As for the ghosts, we had another haunted house in the clan — Garth Lesley’s-over-the-bay. It was haunted by a white cat!”
“Why?”
“Nobody knew. But there it was. The Garth Lesleys were rather proud of it. Lots of people saw it. I saw it. At least, I saw a white cat washing its face on the stairs.”
“But was it the ghost cat?”
“Oh, there you go again. I prefer to believe it was. Otherwise I could never say I’d seen a real ghost. Over there in that corner where the three pines are, Hilary
and Kate Lesley agreed to tell each other what they really thought of each other. They thought it would be fun — but they never ‘spoke’ again. Kate was engaged at one time to her third cousin, Ben Lesley-over-the-bay. It was broken off and later she found her photograph in his mother’s album adorned with horns and a moustache. There was a terrible family row over that. In the tail of the day she married Dave Ridley. A harmless creature — only he would eat the icing off his wife’s piece of cake whenever they went anywhere to tea. Kate didn’t seem to mind — she hated icing — but I always wanted to choke him with gobs of icing until he had enough of it for once. Ben’s sister Laura was jilted by Turner Reed. He married Josie Lesley and when they appeared out in church the first Sunday Laura Lesley went too, in the dress that was to have been her wedding one, and sat down on the other side of Ben. Alec said she should have been tarred and feathered, but I tell you I liked her spunk. There’s a piece of that very dress in my silk log-cabin quilt in the green chest in the garret. You are to have it — and my pearl ring. Your great-grandfather found the pearl in an oyster the day we were engaged and had it set for me. It was reckoned worth five hundred dollars. I’ve left it to you in my will so none of the others can raise a rumpus or do you out of it. Edith-over-the-bay has had her eye on it for years. Thinks she should have it because she was my first namesake. She owes me more than her name if she but knew it. She wouldn’t exist at all if it hadn’t been for me. I made the match between her father and mother. I was quite a matchmaker in my time. They really didn’t want to marry each other a bit but they were just as happy as if they had. All the same, Marigold, don’t ever let any one make a match for you.”
Old Grandmother was silent for a few moments, thinking over, maybe, more old, forgotten loves of the clan. The wind swayed the trees and the shadows danced madly. Were they only shadows — ?
“Annabel Lesley and I used to sit under the syrup apple-tree over there and talk,” said Old Grandmother — in a different voice. A gentle, tender voice. “I loved Annabel. She was the only one of the Lesley clan I really loved. A sweet woman. The only woman I ever knew who would keep secrets. A woman who would really burn a letter if you asked her to. It was safe to empty your soul out to her. Learn to keep a secret, Marigold. And she was just. Learn to be just, Marigold. The hardest thing in the world is to be just. I never was just. It was so much easier to be generous.”
“I could sit here all night and hear you tell about those people,” whispered Marigold.
Old Grandmother sighed. “Once I could have stayed up all night — talking — dancing — and then laugh in the sunrise. But you can’t do those things at ninety-nine. I must leave my ghosts and go in. After all they were a pretty decent lot. We’ve never had a real scandal in the clan. Unless that old affair about Adela’s husband and the arsenic could be called one. You’ll notice when Adela’s books are spoken of, she’s ‘our cousin.’ But when the porridge mystery comes up she’s ‘a third cousin.’ Not that I ever believed she did it. Marigold, will you forgive me for all the pills I’ve made you take?”
“Oh, they were good for me,” protested Marigold.
Old Grandmother chuckled.
“Those are the things we have to be forgiven for. But I don’t ask you to forgive me for all the Bible verses I made you learn. You’ll be grateful to me for them some day. It’s amazing what beautiful things there are in the Bible. ‘When all the morning stars sang together.’ And that speech of Ruth’s to Naomi. Only it always enraged me, too, because no daughter-in-law of mine would ever have said the like to me. Ah, well, they’re all gone now except Marian. It’s time — it’s high time for me to go, too.”
Marigold felt it was such a pity Old Grandmother had to die just when she had got really acquainted with her. And besides Marigold had something on her conscience.
“Grandmother,” she whispered, “I — I’ve made faces at you when you weren’t looking.”
Old Grandmother touched Marigold’s little round cheek with the tip of her finger.
“Are you so sure I didn’t see your faces? I did — often. They weren’t quite as impish as the ones I made at your age. I’m glad I’ve lived long enough for you to remember me, little Marigold. I’m leaving off — you’re beginning. Live joyously, little child. Never mind the old traditions. Traditions don’t matter in a day when queens have their pictures in magazine advertisements. But play the game of life according to the rules. You might as well, because you can’t cheat life in the end.
“And don’t think too much about what people will say. For years I wanted to do something but I was prevented by the thought of what my cousin Evelina would say. At last I did it. And she said, ‘I really didn’t think Edith had so much spunk in her.’ Do anything you want to, Marigold — as long as you can go to your looking-glass afterwards and look yourself in the face. The oracle has spoken. And after all, is it any use? You’ll make your own mistakes and learn from them as we all do. Hand me my cane, child. I’m glad I came out. I haven’t had a laugh for years till to-night when I thought of poor Minister Wood and the bees.”
“Why, I’ve heard you laugh often, Grandmother,” said Marigold, wonderingly.
“Cackling over the mistakes of poor humanity isn’t laughing,” said Old Grandmother. She rose easily to her feet and walked through the orchard, leaning very lightly on her cane. At the gate she paused and looked back, waving a kiss to the invisible presences behind her. The moonlight made jewels of her eyes. The black scarf wound tightly round her head looked like a cap of sleek black hair. Suddenly the years were bridged. She was Edith — Edith of the gold slippers and the Paddy-green petticoat. Before she thought, Marigold cried out,
“Oh — Edith — I know what you looked like now.”
“That had the right sound,” said Old Grandmother. “You’ve given me a moment of youth, Marigold. And now I’m old again and tired — very tired. Help me up the steps.”
5
“Can I help you undress?”
“No, I’m not going to die in a nightdress.” Old Grandmother climbed on the bed and pulled the puff over her. “And I’m going to smash one tradition to bits. I’m not going to die in the spare room. But I’m hungry. I think I’d like an egg fried in butter. But you can’t do it. Isn’t that pathetic? Me wanting a fried egg on my very deathbed and not able to get it.”
Old Grandmother chuckled again — her old satiric chuckle. The Edith of the orchard had gone back to the shadows of a lost century.
“Go and bring me a glass of milk and a roll — one of Salome’s rolls. She makes the best rolls in the world. You can tell her so after I’m gone. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of telling it as long as I am alive.”
Marigold flew to the kitchen, elate with a secret purpose. She was going to fry Old Grandmother an egg. She had never fried an egg, but she had watched Salome do it for Lazarre a hundred times. And she did it — beautifully. When she went back to the orchard room she carried the gold-and-white circle on Old Grandmother’s own particular plate, with one of Salome’s crisp golden-brown rolls.
“Well, of all the children!” said Old Grandmother. She sat up against her pillows and ate her egg with a relish. “It’s got just the flavour it should have. You have the real Lesley touch. We always know by grace and not by law just how big a pinch to put in. Now bring Lucifer to me. I have things to tell that cat. And you must go to bed. It’s twelve o’clock.”
“Should I leave you, ma’am?”
Marigold took no stock in Old Grandmother’s remarks about dying. That was just Old Grandmother’s way of talking. Dying people didn’t go roaming in orchards or eat eggs fried in butter. But perhaps she ought to stay with her till Mother and Young Grandmother came home.
“Of course you must leave me. I’m all right — and will be all right. There’s no earthly reason why you should stay here. Turn the light low and leave the water on the table here.”
Marigold brought Lucifer, warm and black from his nest in the woodshed, and
filled Old Grandmother’s glass.
“Would you like anything more?”
“Nothing you can get me. I’d like a drink of the dandelion wine Alec’s sister Eliza used to make. Nobody could make wine like her. Dead these sixty years — but I can taste it yet — like liquid sunlight. Off with you, now.”
Marigold left Old Grandmother sipping ghostly dandelion wine of the vintage of the sixties, with Lucifer purring blackly beside her. Young Grandmother and Mother found her there when they came in at three o’clock. Lucifer was asleep, but Old Grandmother lay very still with a strange, wise little smile on her face, as if she had attained to the ultimate wisdom and was laughing still but in no unkindly fashion at all blind suppositions and perplexities.
“I shall never forgive myself,” cried Young Grandmother — Young Grandmother no longer.
6
The blinds were drawn. The doors were purple-bowed. The Lesleys came and went decorously. A terrible, abysmal loneliness engulfed Marigold.
And then she suddenly ceased to believe Old Grandmother was dead. That was not Old Grandmother — that little ivory-white creature in the big flower-banked casket. That was not the Edith of the old orchard. She was living and laughing still — if not in the orchard then somewhere else. Even in heaven — which must and would become an entirely different place the moment Old Grandmother arrived there.
The Complete Works of L M Montgomery Page 459