Marigold spent a considerable part of her time doing penance in various small ways for various small misdemeanours. It was not always easy to find a penance to do - something Aunt Anne would let you do. No fasting or kneeling on peas for Aunt Anne. And even when Marigold and Paula between them - Mats bluntly declined to have anything to do with penances - hit on a workable penance, Marigold was apt to discover that she rather liked it - it was int'resting - and Paula had said,
"Just as soon as you like doing a thing it isn't penance of course."
But one "penance" was an experience that always stood out clearly in Marigold's memory. At its first conception it looked like a real penance. She had fallen from grace terribly - she and Mats, if Mats could ever have been considered in a state of grace by Paula's standards. She had been invited to supper at Mats's; and she couldn't resist that supper.
Mats's mother was a notable cook and she had four different kinds of cake. And, alas, every one was a kind of which Marigold was particularly fond. Banana cake with whipped cream - strawberry shortcake - date layer-cake - jelly-roll cake. Marigold took a piece of each and TWO pieces of the shortcake. She KNEW she was doing wrong - from Mother's point of view as well as Paula's; but with Mats gobbling industriously by her side and Mats's mother saying reproachfully,
"You haven't eaten ANYTHING, child,"
What was one to do?
And after supper she and Mats had got a big fashion-book and picked out the dresses they'd have when they grew up; and filled their cup of iniquity to overflowing by "boxing" the bed of the hired man in the kitchen loft. At that, he probably slept better than Marigold, who was sick all night and had horrible dreams. Which might have been thought a sufficient penance. But Paula had a different opinion.
Marigold's conscience gave her no rest until she had confessed everything to Paula.
"You are a Pharisee," said Paula sorrowfully.
"Oh, I'm NOT," wailed Marigold. "It was just - "
Then she stopped. No, she was NOT going to say,
"Mats and her mother just MADE me eat."
That wasn't altogether true. She had been very willing to eat and she must bear her own iniquities. But had she lost caste forever in Paula's eyes? Would she no longer be considered One of Us?
"You've been very wicked," said Paula. "Your lamp has almost gone out and you must do a specially hard penance to atone."
Marigold sighed with relief. So she was not to be cast off. Of course she would do a penance. But what penance - at once severe enough and practicable. Paula thought of it.
"You're afraid of being alone in the dark. Sleep out all night on the roof of the veranda. THAT will be a real penance."
It certainly would. How real, Marigold knew too well. It was true that she was afraid of being alone in the dark. She was never afraid in the dark if any one was with her, but to be alone in it was terrible. She was becoming very ashamed of this terror. Grandmother said severely that a girl of eleven should not be such a baby and Marigold was sure that Old Grandmother would have scorned her for a coward. But so far she had not been able to conquer her dread of it. And the thought of spending the night ALONE on the veranda roof appalled her. Nevertheless she agreed to do it.
It was easy enough from one point of view. There was a door in her little tower-room opening on the veranda roof and there was a little iron bedstead on it. All Marigold had to do was to slip out of bed as soon as everybody was asleep and drag her bedclothes and mattress out.
She did it - in a cold perspiration - and crept into bed trembling from head to foot.
"I WON'T be scared of you," she gasped gallantly to the night.
But she was. She felt all the primitive, unreasoning fear known to the childhood of the race. The awe of the dark and the shadowy - the shrinking from some unseen menace lurking in the gloom. The night seemed creeping down through the spruce wood behind the house like a living - but not human - thing to pounce on her. Darkness all about her - around - above - below. And in that darkness - what?
She wanted to cover up her head but she would not. That would be shirking part of the penance. She lay there and looked up at the sky - that terrible ocean of stars which Uncle Klon had told her were suns, millions of millions of millions of miles away. There did not seem to be a sound in the whole earth. It was waiting - waiting - for WHAT? Suppose every one in the world was dead! Suppose she was the only person left alive in that terrible silence!
Then - she could not have told whether it was hours or minutes later - something changed. All at once. She was no longer frightened. She sat up and looked about her. On a world of velvet and shadow and stars. The boughs of the spruces tossed in a sudden wind against the sky. The gulf waters were silver under the rising moon. The trees were whispering in the garden like old friends. The fern scents of a warm summer night drifted down from the hill.
"Why - I like the dark," Marigold whispered to herself. "It's nice - and kind - and friendly. I never thought it could be so beautiful."
She stretched out her arms to it. It seemed a Presence, hovering, loving, enfolding. She lay down again in its shadow and surrendered herself utterly to its charm, letting her thoughts run out into it far beyond the Milky Way. She did not want to sleep - but after a time she slept. And wakened in the pale, windless morning just as a new dawn came creeping across Broad Acres. The dreamy dunes along the shore were lilac and blue and gold. Above her were high and lovely clouds just touched by sunrise. Below in the garden the dews were silver in the hearts of unblown roses. Uncle Charlie's sheep in the brook pasture looked amazingly white and pearly and plump in the misty morning light. The world had a look Marigold had never seen it wear before - an expectant, untouched look as if it were a morning in Eden. She sighed with delight. A mystic happiness possessed her.
Paula was over soon after breakfast to find out if Marigold really had stuck it out on the veranda all night.
"You look too happy about it," she said reproachfully.
"It WAS a penance for a little while at first and then I enjoyed it," said Marigold honestly.
"You enjoy too many things," said Paula despairingly. "A penance isn't a penance if you ENJOY it."
"I can't help liking things and I'm glad I do," said Marigold in a sudden accession of common sense. "It makes life so much more int'resting."
6
Marigold was going to the post-office to mail a letter for Aunt Anne. It was a lovely afternoon. Never had the world seemed so beautiful, in spite of the hundreds of millions of sinful people living in it. When she passed Mats's gate, Mats was playing by herself at jackstones under the big apple-tree. Mats had backslidden sadly of late and had returned to her wallowing in jackstones - thereby proving conclusively that she was not One of Us. She beckoned a gay invitation to Marigold, but Marigold shook her head and walked righteously on.
A little further down there was a sharp turn in the red road and Miss Lula Jacobs's little white house was in the angle. And Miss Lula's famous delphiniums were holding up their gleaming blue torches by the white paling. Marigold stopped for a moment to admire them. She would have gone in, for she and Miss Lula were very good friends, but she knew Miss Lula was not home, being in fact at Broad Acres with Aunt Anne at that very moment.
Marigold could see the pantry-window through the delphinium-stalks. And she saw something else. A dark-brown head popped out of the window, looked around, then disappeared. The next moment Paula Pengelly slipped nimbly over the sill to the ground and marched off through the spruce-bush behind Miss Lula's house. And Paula held in her hands a cake - a whole cake - which she was devouring in rapid mouthfuls.
Marigold stood as if turned to stone, in that terrible moment of disillusion. That was the cake Miss Lula had made for the Ladies' Aid social on the morrow - a very special cake with nut and raisin filling and caramel icing. She had heard Miss Lula telling Aunt Anne all about it just before she came away.