“My, but ain’t Marigold Lesley getting stuck-up,” Willa Rogers said.
Marigold laid aside the tiny diamond ring Aunt Marigold had given her on her last birthday. Consecrated people should not, she felt, wear diamond rings. Uncle Klon offered to get her one of the new striped silk parasols she had craved, but Marigold thanked him firmly and serenely and would he please give her a concordance instead. Uncle Klon chuckled and gave it to her. He did not know what particular magic Marigold was making now, but she knew she was getting a tremendous lot of satisfaction out of it.
She was. It was positive rapture to refuse the new ribbon hat-streamers for which her soul had once longed and wear her old hat to Cousin Nellie’s wedding. Once Marigold had been interested in weddings. Who knew—when one grew up—? But that was past. She must never ever think of being married. Marigold was nothing if not thorough. Naught but counsels of perfection for her. She washed dishes and beat eggs and weeded her garden rapt as a saint.
She gave up reading everything except missionary literature. She pored over the missionary books from the Sunday-school library—especially one fascinating little fat brown volume, the biography of a missionary who had “prepared” herself from the age of six. Marigold felt she had lost many precious years. But she would do her best to catch up. She rose at five o’clock—once—to read the Bible and pray. That would sound well in a memoir. The said missionary had arisen at five o’clock every morning of her life from her sixth birthday. But said missionary did not have a Grandmother. That made all the difference.
The only thing that really hurt very badly was giving up Sylvia. At first Marigold felt that she could not—could not—do this. But she must. Sacrifice was not really sacrifice unless it hurt you. Dr. Violet had said so. She explained it all tearfully to Sylvia. Was it only fancy or did a mocking elfin-rill of laughter follow her down the orchard from the cloud of spruce? It almost seemed as if Sylvia didn’t think she meant it.
Marigold tried to fill up the resulting gap in her life by imagining herself being carried about on the backs of elephants and rescuing child-widows from burning, at the risk of her life. To be sure, Dr. Violet had not said anything about riding on elephants—she had even mentioned a prosaic motor-car—and Mr. Thompson said widows were no longer burned. But no doubt something just as dreadful was done to them. Marigold stifled her longing for Sylvia in rescuing them by the dozen. Oh, I fancy Uncle Klon was right.
Marigold had some moments of agonized wonder if she would ever be able to pray in public. She tried to make a small beginning by saying “Amen” under her breath whenever Mr. Thompson said anything in his prayers that appealed to her. And it was very hard to decide where she would go as a missionary. She shuddered for days between Japanese earthquakes and Indian snakes. Until she got a book about the lepers in India. The lepers carried the day. They must be attended to, snakes or no snakes. She would be a missionary to the lepers. And meanwhile Grandmother was horribly cross because Marigold had forgotten to water the geraniums. She couldn’t explain to Grandmother that she had forgotten because she was bringing an Indian village through a famine. But she was calm and serene under Grandmother’s disapproval. Very.
3
For two or three weeks this was all very well and satisfying. Then Marigold yearned for what Alexander the Great would have called more worlds to conquer and Dr. Violet Meriwether might have termed a wider field of service. The heroine of the memoirs was always visiting some one who was sick or in trouble and working wonders of consolation. Marigold felt she should do the same. But whom to visit? There was nobody sick or in trouble—that Marigold knew of—near Cloud of Spruce just then. Unless it might be Mrs. Delagarde. The thought of her came to Marigold like an inspiration. Mrs. Delagarde of the black robes and the sad, sad face. Who never went anywhere but wandered about in her big garden all day long in South Harmony.
Marigold had heard someone say that Mrs. Delagarde was a “little off.” She did not know what that meant exactly but she felt sure anyone with that sorrowful face was in need of comforting. She would go to see her and—and—what? Read the Bible to her as the Lady of the Memoirs had done? Marigold could not see herself doing that. But she would just go to see her—and perhaps the way would be opened up. In the Memoirs a way was always opened up. Marigold slipped up to her room before she went, and said a little special prayer. A very earnest, sincere little prayer, in spite of the fact that it was couched largely in the language of the Memoirs. Then she stole away through the fragrant evening.
Marigold had a moment of panic when she found herself really inside Mrs. Delagarde’s gate facing a grim house that looked black against the sunset. But a missionary must be self-reliant. A missionary must not give way to panic. With a gallant smile Marigold marched down the aisle of daffodils to where Mrs. Delagarde was standing among the pale gold of lemon lilies in the shadows, with an amber sky and dark hills behind her, staring unseeingly before her with her large, strange agate-gray eyes.
Mrs. Delagarde surprised Marigold. Her whole sad face lighted up with a wonderful radiance of joy. She stepped forward and held out her hands. Marigold was to be haunted for weeks by those long pale hands held out in supplication.
“Delight—Delight—you have come back to me—” she said.
Marigold let Mrs. Delagarde take her hands—put her arms round her—press her lips to her forehead. She suddenly felt very queer—and frightened. There was something about Mrs. Delagarde—and she was being drawn into the house. What was Mrs. Delagarde saying—in that quick, strange, passionate voice of hers, that wasn’t like any voice Marigold knew?
“I’ve often seen you walking before me—with your face turned away. You’d never wait for me. But now you have come back, Delight. So you must have forgiven me. Have you forgiven me, Delight?”
“Oh—yes—yes.” Marigold would have said “yes” to any question. She did not know what she was saying. She was no brave missionary—no ambitious candidate for Memoirs—she was only a very badly frightened little girl—shut up in a strange house with a strange—a very strange woman.
Again that wonderful flash of joy crossed Mrs. Delagarde’s face.
“Come up to your room, Delight. It is all ready for you. I have kept it all ready. I knew you would come back to me sometime—when I had been punished enough. So I have kept it ready for you.”
Marigold was being drawn up the stairs by that insistent arm—across the hall—into a room. A large, shadowy room with four great windows. And in the midst a huge white bed with something lying on it. Marigold felt a prickling in the roots of her hair. Was it—was it—?
“There is your big doll, Delight,” said Mrs. Delagarde, laughing a little wildly. “I’ve kept it for you, you see. Take it up and play with it. I want to see you play, Delight. It’s so long since I have seen you play. And your dresses are all in the closet for you. See.”
She opened the closet-door and Marigold saw them—rows of dainty dresses hanging there, awfully like Bluebeard’s wives in a picture-book she had.
Marigold found her voice—a shaky, panicky voice.
“Please may I go home now?” she gasped. “I—I think Mother will be wanting me. It’s—getting late.”
A look of alarm crossed Mrs. Delagarde’s pale face—followed by a look of cunning.
“But you are home, Delight. You are my child—though you have left me so long. Oh, it was cruel to leave me so long. But I will not scold you—I will never scold you again. Now you have come back. You must never leave me again. Never. I am going to find your father and tell him you have come back. I have never spoken to him since you went away—but I will speak now. Oh, Delight, Delight!”
Marigold eluded the outstretched arms.
“Please, please let me go,” she entreated desperately. “I’m not your little Delight—really I’m not—my name is Marigold Lesley. Please, dear Mrs. Delagarde, let me go home.”
/> “You are still angry with me,” said Mrs. Delagarde sorrowfully. “That is why you talk so. Of course you are Delight. Don’t you think I know your golden hair? But you are angry with me because I whipped you that day before you went away. I will never do that again, Delight. You need not be afraid of me, darling. Tell me again that you forgive me, sweetest—tell me again that you forgive me.”
“Oh, I do—I do.” If only Mrs. Delagarde would let her out! But Mrs. Delagarde knelt down by her entreatingly.
“Oh, we will be so happy now that you have come back, Delight. Kiss me—kiss me. You have turned your face away from me so long, my golden-haired Delight.”
Her voice was so appealing that Marigold, in spite of her terror, could not refuse. She bent forward and kissed Mrs. Delagarde—then found herself seized in a wild embrace and smothered with hungry kisses.
Marigold tore herself from the encircling arms and darted towards the door. But Mrs. Delagarde caught her as she reached it—pushed her aside with a strange little laugh and slipped out. Marigold heard the key turn in the lock.
She was a prisoner in the house of a crazy woman. She knew now. That was what people meant when they called Mrs. Delagarde “a little off.”
What could she do? Nothing. Nobody knew where she was. Alone in this horrible, big, darkening room with the shrouded windows. With those dreadful dresses of dead Delight hanging in the closet. With that terrible doll lying on the bed like a dead thing. With a huge, black bearskin muff on a little stand by the bed. What wild tale had Lazarre once told her about those big, old-fashioned bearskin muffs? That they were really witches and went out on moonlit nights and danced in the snow. There was a moon tonight—already its faint radiance was stealing into the room—suppose the muff began to dance around the room before her!
Marigold stifled the scream that rose to her lips. It might bring Mrs. Delagarde back. Nothing would be so dreadful as that—not even a bewitched bearskin muff. She was afraid even to move—but she managed to tiptoe to window after window. They were all nailed down—every one of them. Anyway, all of them opened on a steep bare wall. No chance of escape there. And through one she saw the home-light at Cloud of Spruce. Had they missed her? Were they searching for her? But they would never think of coming here.
She sat down in an old cretonne-covered wing-chair by the window—as far as possible from the bed and the muff. She sat there through the whole of the chilly, incredible, everlasting night. Nobody came. At first there was only a dreadful stillness. There did not seem to be a sound in the whole earth. The wind rose and the moonlight went out and the windows rattled unceasingly. And she was sure the muff moved. And the dresses in the closet surely stirred. Twice she heard footsteps in the hall.
Morning came—a cloudy morning with a blood-red sunrise sky. The windows all looked out on green widespread fields. There was no way in which she could attract attention. No way of escape. She would die here of starvation, and Mother would never know what had become of her. Again and again she heard footsteps passing along the hall—again and again she held her breath with fear lest they pause at the door. She suffered with thirst as the day wore on but she felt no hunger. A queer, numb resignation was stealing over her. Perhaps she would die very soon—but that no longer seemed terrible. The only terrible thing was that Mrs. Delagarde might come back.
Evening again—moonlight again—wind again—a snarling, quarrelsome wind that worried a vine at the window and sent a queer shadow flying across the room to the bearskin muff. It seemed to move—it was moving—Marigold suddenly went to pieces. She shrieked madly—she flew across the room—she tugged frantically at the locked door. It opened so suddenly that she nearly fell over backward. She did not pause to reflect that it could never have been locked at all, in spite of the turned key—she was past thinking or reflecting. She fled across the hall—down the stairs—out—out into freedom. She never stopped running till she stumbled into the hall at Cloud of Spruce—a hall full of wild, excited people, amid which she caught one glimpse of Mother’s white anguished face before—for the first time in her life—she fainted.
“Good God,” said Uncle Klon. “Here she is.”
4
It was next day and Marigold was in bed with Mother sitting by her bedside and Grandmother coming in and out trying to look disapproving but too relieved and thankful to make a success of it. The whole story had been told—and much more. Marigold knew all about Mrs. Delagarde now—poor Mrs. Delagarde, who had lost her only little child a year ago, and had not been right in her mind ever since. Who had sat for hours by her little girl’s side entreating her to speak to her once more—just one word. Who could not forget for a moment that she had whipped Delight the day before her sudden illness. Who had never forgiven her husband because he had been away when Delight took ill and there was no one to go for the doctor through the storm.
“The poor unhappy lady is greatly to be pitied,” Mother said. “But, oh, darling, what a terrible time you have had.”
“Some of the rest of us have had a terrible time, too,” said Grandmother grimly. “Mrs. Donkin was sure she saw you at dusk in an automobile with two strange-looking men. And Toff Leclerc’s boat is missing and we thought you had floated out into the channel in it. The whole country has been combed for you, miss.”
“I’m afraid I’m not fit to be a missionary, Mother,” sobbed Marigold when Grandmother had gone out. “I wasn’t brave—or resourceful—or serene—or anything.”
Mother cuddled her—compassionate, tender, understanding.
“It’s a very fine, splendid thing to be a missionary, dear, and if, when you grow up, you feel called to that particular form of service nobody will try to hinder you. But the best way to prepare for it is just to learn all you can and get a good education and live as happily and pleasantly as a small girl can, meanwhile. Dr. Violet Meriwether was the jolliest little tomboy in the world when we were girls together—a perfect mischief and madcap.”
Aunt Marigold made her namesake stay in bed for a week. On the day Marigold was allowed to get up Mother came in smiling.
“After all, your missionary effort seems to have done some good, Marigold. Mrs. Delagarde’s doctor says she is very much better. She has ceased to talk about Delight and she has forgiven her husband. Dr. Ryan says she is quite rational in many ways and he thinks if she is taken away for a complete change of scene and association she will recover completely. He says she told him she was ‘forgiven’ and this conviction seems to have cured some sick spot in her soul.”
“Humph,” said Grandmother—rather gently, however.
“Isn’t it funny she never came back to the room?” said Marigold.
“She probably forgot all about you the minute you were out of her sight.”
“I was so afraid she would. I thought I heard her outside all the time. That was why I never dared go near the door. And it wasn’t locked at all—though I know I heard the key turn.”
“I suppose it didn’t turn all the way. Keys sometimes stick like that.”
“Wasn’t it silly to think I was locked in when I might have got out right away? I guess I’ve been silly right through. But—”
Marigold sighed. After having been consecrated and set apart for three weeks it was somewhat flat and savorless to come back to ordinary, memoirless life.
But visions of a new apricot dress were again flickering alluringly before her eyes. And Sylvia was on the hill—a forgiving Sylvia, who made no difference at all because of her brief defection.
CHAPTER 16
One of Us
1
“I’m going traveling tomorrow. It makes me feel very important,” Marigold told Sylvia one evening.
Hitherto Marigold had not done a great deal of visiting. Grandmother disapproved of it and Mother seldom dared to disagree with Grandmother. Besides Marigold herself had no great hankering to visit—by which she
meant going away from home by herself to stay overnight. Only twice had she done it before—to Uncle Paul’s and to Aunt Stasia’s, and neither “visit” had been much of a success. Marigold still tingled with shame and resentment whenever she thought of “it.” She vowed she would never go to Aunt Stasia’s again.
But, of course, it was different at Aunt Anne’s. Marigold loved Aunt Anne best of all her aunts. So when Aunt Anne came one day to Cloud of Spruce and said:
“I want to borrow Marigold for a while,” Marigold was very glad that Grandmother raised no objections.
Grandmother thought it was time the child was seeing something of the world. She had her head stuffed too full of nonsense, like that Sylvia business. Despite Dr. Adam Clow—who came no more to Cloud of Spruce, having fared forth on an adventurous journey beyond our bourne of time and space—Grandmother thought it was hanging on too long. What might be tolerated at eight was inexcusable at eleven. Anne and Charles were sensible people—though Anne was too indulgent. Grandmother expected Marigold to come home with her digestion ruined for life.
But Marigold went to Aunt Anne’s with no cloud over her golden anticipations. Aunt Anne was a twinkly-eyed lady who was always saying, “I must go and see if there is anything nice in the pantry.” You couldn’t help adoring an aunty like that. It may be that Grandmother’s fears were not altogether unfounded.
But she had to content herself with exacting a promise from Anne that Marigold must eat porridge every morning—real oatmeal porridge. If that were done, Grandmother felt that the rest of the day might be trusted to take care of itself.
So Marigold went to Broad Acres and loved it at first sight. An old gray homestead right down by the sea—the real, wonderful sea, not merely the calm, land-locked harbor. Built on a little point of land running out into a pond, with a steep fir-clad hill behind it and slender silver birch-trees all over it. With an old thorn-hedge the slips of which had been brought out from the Old Country—that mysterious land across the ocean where the Lesley clan had its roots. Enclosing a garden even more wonderful and fascinating than the garden at home—for a garden by the sea has in it something no inland garden can ever have. An old stone dyke between the house and the hill, with gorgeous hollyhocks flaunting over it. And a dear little six-sided room in “the tower,” where you could lie at night and watch the stars twinkling through the fir-boughs. All this, with an uncle who knew a joke when he saw it and an aunty who let you alone so beautifully made Broad Acres just the spot for a vacation-visit.