Chapter 22

C HAPTER 22

I am suffocated and lost if I have not the bright feeling of progression.

—Margaret Fuller

Marigold returned to the garden after Cab and Tad's departure only to find the beds had already been salvaged. Herbs had been tamped back down and damaged plants pruned back and staked up with twine, and the soil was damp from watering with laboriously toted pails of water from the pump.

"Thank you, Cleon," she called to the old man. He had even left a gift of a new plant, a tall spike of beautifully speckled pink bells. "How kind."

"A pretty plant for a pretty lady," he said as he shuffled away with his fishing pole.

Marigold was cheered by this evidence of goodwill and was kept from any further contemplation of the evils of her predicament that afternoon when Daisy brought fresh intelligence about the party.

The celebration of Thaddeus Endicott's twenty-first birthday was to be held on the grounds of the Endicotts' expansive summer estate, Rock Ledge—the very estate Daisy had gazed at with such longing.

Marigold felt herself to be on firmly solid ground. If she could accomplish this one thing for Daisy, teach her that she had every right to make herself happy with Tad Endicott—or anyone else her beautiful cousin might fancy—Marigold could leave Hatchet Farm with her head held high.

Daisy was, as might be expected, in raptures. "Oh, I about swooned when he said he would invite us. Isn't he just the sweetest?" She sighed in wonder. "Isn't he just the handsomest boy you ever saw?"

"Very handsome," Marigold agreed, while making a mental note to include more of the precautionary arts in Daisy's schooling. "But we are not invited yet." And getting an invitation out of Mrs. George C. Endicott was not going to be easy—the party was a little over a week away, and Marigold was sure Mrs. Endicott had sent out all the invitations she had meant to send. "And I do want to warn you, as the host, Tad will be obliged to dance with a great number of other young ladies. It won't do if you're jealous."

"Jealous?" Daisy seemed genuinely astonished at the idea. "I don't reckon I ever thought of that. Ought I to be?"

"No." Marigold felt more than a twinge at having suspected such an artless girl of being in any way involved in any young woman's drowning. But Daisy's innocence also gave her a new goal—to increase her acquaintance with more young ladies in town. "You're an absolute lamb—but a lamb who needs to practice her response, should the invitation arrive. Miss Daisy Hatchet accepts with pleasure ," she dictated, " on behalf of herself, her brothers, Mr. Wilbert Hatchet and Mr. Seviah Hatchet, the kind invitation of Mrs. Endicott, for the evening of May fifth, 1894. "

"I've got to say all that just to say, yes, please?" Daisy said in wonder. "Fancy that!"

"Just the right kind of fancy—the correct kind," Marigold explained. "Because you want to serve notice to Tad's mother that you are every bit equal and indeed suitable to be Tad's bride, don't you?"

"Oh, I do," the girl swore.

"Then you must practice your penmanship." Marigold's feelings about penmanship remained quite strict. "A fine hand is seen as the indication of a fine mind and finer feelings, which you have in abundance and only need to refine."

"You think Will and Sev oughta to be our escorts and not the dee-vine Mr. Cab Cox?"

"Ought to," Marigold corrected. "Yes." She was enough in possession of herself to quash the ridiculous pang of illogical emotion attempting to rear its head at the mention of Cab's name and answered Daisy with equanimity. "Cab will surely have received his own invitation." And he might be kind enough to include Marigold. But Cab's decisions were not the point. "I think Wilbert and Seviah will greatly enjoy—and benefit from—the entertainment."

And Seviah especially would fill out an evening suit nicely, which would hopefully go a long way toward winning the favor of the town's daughters. Handsome young men prepared to dance with the wallflowers would be a boon to Mrs. Endicott's entertainment—if Marigold could finagle them suits.

"Oh! I know—" Daisy jumped up in excitement. "We can trade the invitation for borrowing Sev's gramophone, so you can teach me how to dance properly."

"Seviah has a gramophone?" Marigold had never heard any music in the house—though Seviah did seem to know all the popular vaudeville tunes.

"He's got it hidden up at the top of the barn. Thinks I don't know, but that's where he goes at night to listen to his songs after everyone else is abed."

For once, a useful secret. "Excellent. I will seek out Seviah and his hidden gramophone in the morning before I go to town."

"I can't believe your moxie in going across so often," Daisy exclaimed. "But can you get me a dress when you go there? Or let me borrow one of yours? I don't know how to sew anything so fine as what might impress Taddy's folks."

"No, I will not buy you a dress in Pride's Crossing nor let you borrow one, for everything I have is last season, which might be good enough most of the time. But this is not most of the time—this is special, in the grand ballroom of the grandest estate on the North Shore. But"—Marigold smiled to stave off Daisy's disappointment—"I have a plan. Let us get you into a decent, modern corset so I can take your measurements properly, which I will wire to my friend I told you about, Isabella Dana."

"The coo-tur-ee-yay?" Daisy sounded the word out carefully to get it right.

"The very one. She will know exactly what is called for on the occasion of a celebratory birthday supper dance given by Mrs. George C. Endicott." Isabella's encyclopedic knowledge of society could be counted on to establish the correct degree of deference in dress to please their hostess. And perhaps also find them a way in.

"But how are we going to pay for a dress from the House of Dana? I ain't got no actual."

"Haven't got any ready money," Marigold corrected her. "You let me worry about that. And it will not be a dress but a gown—an evening gown," she clarified. A stunning gown that would cement in partygoers' minds the image of the Hatchets as people of so much account that Daisy would appear to belong not only at the dance but also at Tad's side.

The truth of which Marigold was growing more confident. Daisy was proving an apt pupil of both elocution and vocabulary as well as in poise and self-assurance. While her young cousin was by no means fully a New Woman, she was affording herself more than enough self-respect to make Marigold proud.

Wilbert was also working studiously on self-improvement with his reading and writing. In fact, Marigold might soon need to combine her study sessions with her cousins into one, especially if Seviah and his gramophone were to be brought within their secret circles.

Marigold found her younger male cousin quite easily the next morning—all she had to do was set to repairing her damaged bicycle in one of the empty stalls in the barn and he appeared, drawn like a moth to the machine's modern, unconventional flame.

"That your bicycle, then?" Seviah slouched against the empty stall door.

"It is indeed. Isn't she a beauty?" Marigold had not quite felt her modern self without her own mode of independent transportation, and after yesterday morning, she was more anxious than ever to be able to be able to escape the oppressive atmosphere of the farm.

Luckily, her machine was not so badly damaged as either she or Cab had feared; although the creel basket was hopelessly crushed, the mainframe of the bicycle had suffered only minor scratches, which she would soon repair with a fresh application of black enamel paint. Which she would buy as soon as she got to town.

She finished mounting the handlebars onto the front tube as Seviah sauntered close enough to thumb the clapper of the bell. "Fancy."

"Yes, she is, my darling Victoria, queen of the safety bicycles."

"Safety bicycle? Doesn't look particularly safe, if you ask me."

"Oh, it's not," she agreed. "Riding it is still pleasurably dangerous. One can achieve speeds perilous enough to exhilarate." She smiled as she tested the brake levers and then moved on to lubricating the drive chain to keep the gear teeth meshing silently with the sprockets before she was satisfied enough to resecure the all-important chain guard—Marigold preferred more stylish split skirts to bloomers and took great care to mount the chain and wheel guards so her hems would not become fouled in the mechanism.

"Look at you," Seviah marveled, "all mechanical and all that."

"Look at me," she repeated with a smile as she secured the nuts. "And … look at me now!" She rolled the bicycle past her astonished cousin and mounted on the fly to pedal around the farmyard, testing out her adjustments.

"Look at you!" Seviah echoed before he broke into song. " And you'll look sweet, upon the seat of a bicycle built —for one!"

"What a marvelous voice you have, Seviah!" she encouraged, loving the joyous relief of pedaling her bicycle and wanting the moment to last. "Sing me the rest."

Seviah obliged with a laughing rendition of the popular tune. " Daisy, Daisy —but you're a Marigold, Marigold ," he corrected himself before he continued. " Give me your answer, do. I'm half-crazy over the love of you. "

Lucy joined in from the water pump, and the harmonization of their two voices was sublime enough to make Marigold brake to a stop just to listen. " It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage. But you'll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two. "

"That was wonderful—as good as any music hall I've ever heard. Your talents are wasted here!" She said it to be kind and encouraging and honest all at the same time, but the moment the words passed her lips, she got the same sort of strange tingling quiet inside that she had felt when she first received Cousin Sophronia's letter—and when she realized Thaddeus Endicott was Daisy's Taddy. "Do you two sing together often?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Seviah scoffed. But there was something about the speed and vehemence of his response that made her think she might have struck a nerve.

"Have you ever thought of singing professionally, Seviah?"

He was less vehement but no less cagey. He threw up that defensive shrug. "Dunno."

"What about you, Lucy?" Marigold tried to keep Lucy from shying off. "Ever thought of it?"

"Don't suppose I have," Lucy answered carefully. "I do like singing with the choir at my momma's church when I can get over there. It's too far to go to town every Sunday, and anyways, Miz Alva likes her morning vittles special on Sundays." She exchanged an enigmatic look with Seviah before turning back toward her cabin. "But I got a job up here I'm meant to do, so I best get to it."

Meant to do was interesting language—it implied a hand not her own was pulling Lucy's strings. But who was the puppet master? Seviah had sauntered some small distance away to give the impression that it was certainly not he, but Marigold was not so sure.

But that was a thought for another day. Today, there was the freedom of the bicycle to be enjoyed and that time-sensitive wire to be sent to Isabella. And a gramophone to secure.

"Seviah! How should you like to escort Daisy to a dance in town?"

"What, now?" he laughed.

"No, in a week's time. At a summer estate. I'll vouchsafe you a dinner suit to wear."

"Could you?" He tried to couch his eagerness in a sort of jaded aloofness. "From that Harvard fellow, the one who sailed himself up here to impress you?"

"Actually, I asked him up here so his cousin, Tad Endicott, might impress Daisy, and she him."

"Them two's after ‘impressing' each other—if that's what you can call it—for months now," Seviah scoffed.

"You know about Daisy and Tad?" Clearly, the Hatchets were better at ferreting out each other's secrets than she. "Then you'll agree to help her and go to the dance, and dance with her?"

"And dance with you?"

"Naturally, you shall also dance with me." Marigold saw her opening. "But I shall want something from you in return for the privilege."

For a moment he looked surprised, before he covered his expression with his usual wolfish leer. "And what do you fancy, Miss Frosty Boston Manners?"

"Your gramophone."

"Shh!" He clamped a hand over her mouth. "Who told you I've got a Berliner?"

Marigold tried to mumble around his palm. "Daisy."

"And how did she know?" He lowered his hand.

"Perhaps you're not so secretive as you—either of you—think," Marigold teased. But he looked so very nearly apoplectic that she quickly added, "But we're not about to tell anyone else, if that's your worry. We just want to play your gramophone so I can teach Daisy the latest dances in preparation for Tad's birthday party."

"You know all the latest dances, then?"

"I do. Or at least I did two weeks ago, but I don't think the fashion in dances has changed much since then."

"And you'll teach me and dance with me too?"

"Certainly." She ought to have anticipated that Seviah might know the music but not the steps. And that he was not as sophisticated or experienced with the world as he might want her to think—or as he clearly longed to be.

"And you'll really get me a fancy monkey suit, like those polished fellows in the traveling revues? Like that Barrymore swell?"

"Indeed." Marigold had seen Mr. Maurice Barrymore perform at Boston's Athenaeum Theater just last year but wondered how Seviah might have seen such a performer, who was not likely to have played on the sort of circuit that chanced through Pride's Crossing. "You're a handsome young man, Seviah. Indeed, you'll look quite the matinee idol. All the girls are sure to find you irresistible. But handsome is as handsome does, and you won't do a thing—or get the invitation to that dance—if you don't share your gramophone."

"It's yours!" he swore. "I got a little spot fixed up in the barn for the gramo, right and tight under the eaves, away from Pa and Granny. I don't get the Berliner cranked up unless I know the old man's asnore."

"Then we'll hope for an early bedtime, shall we, and meet you there later tonight?"

"You do that." He broke into a satisfied smile. "Look at you, making private arrangements and keeping secrets. We might make a Hatchet out of you after all."