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 agonised 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 some one say that Mrs. Delagarde was a "little off." She did not know what that meant exactly but she felt sure any one 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-grey 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."