And Paula had stolen it!
Paula the Lighted Lamp - Paula the consecrated, Paula the rigid devotee of fasts and self-immolation, Paula the hearer of unearthly voices. Paula had stolen it and was gobbling it up all by herself.
Marigold went on to the post-office, torn between the anguish of disillusionment and the anger of the disillusioned. Nothing was quite the same - never could be again, she thought gloomily. The sun was not so bright, the sky so blue, the flowers so flowery. The west wind, purring in the grass, and the mad merry dance of the aspen-leaves hurt her.
An ideal had been shattered. She had believed so in Paula. She had believed in her vigils and her denials. Marigold thought bitterly of all those untaken second helpings.
Mats was not in when Marigold returned, but Marigold went home to Broad Acres and played jackstones by herself. And let herself go in a mad orgy of pretending, after all these weeks when, swallowed up in a passion of sacrifice, she had not even allowed herself to think of her world of fancy. Also she remembered with considerable satisfaction that Aunt Anne was making an apple-cake for supper.
Paula found her there and looked at her reproachfully - with purple- ringed eyes which, Marigold reflected scornfully, certainly did not come from fasting this time. Indigestion more likely.
"Is this how you, the possessor of an immortal soul, are wasting your precious time?" she asked rebukingly.
"Never mind my soul," cried Marigold stormily. "Just you think of poor Miss Lula's cake."
Paula bounced up, her pale face for once crimson.
"What do you mean?" she cried.
"I saw you," said Marigold.
"Do you want your nose pulled?" shrieked Paula.
"Try it," said Marigold superbly.
Suddenly Paula collapsed on the grey stone and burst into tears.
"You needn't make - such a fuss - over a trifle," she sobbed.
"Trifle. You STOLE it."
"I - I was so hungry for a piece of cake. I NEVER get any - Father won't let Aunt Em make any. Nothing but porridge and nuts for breakfast and dinner and supper, day in and day out. And that cake looked so scrumptious. You'd have taken it yourself. Miss Lula has heaps of them. She LOVES making cake."
Marigold looked at Paula, all the anger and contempt gone out of her eyes. Little sinning, human Paula, like herself. Marigold no longer worshipped her but she suddenly loved her.
"Never mind," she said softly. "I - guess I understand. But - I can't be a Lighted Lamp any longer, Paula."
Paula wiped away her tears briskly.
"Don't know's I care. I was getting awfully tired of being so religious, anyhow."
"I - I think we didn't go the right way about being religious," said Marigold timidly. "Aunt Marigold says religion is just loving God and people and things."
"Maybe," said Paula - going down on her knees - but not to pray. "Anyhow I got all the cake I wanted for ONCE. Let's have a game of jacks before Mats shows up. She always spoils everything with her jabber. She isn't really One of Us."
CHAPTER XVII
Not by Bread Alone
1
Salome had gone to Charlottetown for the day - rather unwillingly, for she had had a horrible dream of fourteen people coming to supper and nothing in the house for them to eat but cold boiled potatoes.
"And there's more truth than poetry in THAT, ma'am," she said, "for there isn't a thing baked except the raisin-bread. I assure you I don't dream dreams like that for nothing. And there's the Witch of Endor polishing her face out by the apple-barn."
It was an inflexible Cloud of Spruce tradition that there must always be cake in the pantry - fresh, flawless cake - lest unexpected company come to tea. No company had ever found Cloud of Spruce cakeless. Grandmother and Mother would both have died of horror on the spot if such a thing had happened. Kingdoms of Europe might rise and fall - famines might ravage India and revolutions sweep China - Liberals and Conservatives, Republicans and Democrats might crash down to defeat, but so long as cake-box and cooky-jar were filled there was balm in Gilead.
Yet this unthinkable thing had actually occurred. The evening before three car-loads of visitors had come out from Summerside and found cake in the pantry - but left none. No wonder Salome was upset.
"I have made cake before now," said Grandmother rather sarcastically. Every once in so long Salome had to be snubbed. "And so has Mrs. Leander."
When Grandmother called Lorraine Mrs. Leander before Salome, Salome knew she was snubbed.
"I am well aware," she said with meek stateliness, "that I am not the only cook at Cloud of Spruce. I merely thought, ma'am, that seeing it was my duty to keep the pantry well filled, I ought not to neglect it for the sake of my own pleasure. I am not like my sister-in-law Rose John, ma'am. SHE hasn't any sense of shame. When unexpected company comes to tea she just runs out and borrows a cake from a neighbour. Whatever John saw in HER enough to marry her I have never been able to imagine."
"Go and enjoy your holiday, Salome," said Lorraine kindly, knowing that if Salome once fairly embarked on the delinquencies of Rose John there was no telling when she would stop. "You deserve it. Grandmother and I will soon fill up the pantry."
Alas! Mother had got only as far as getting out her mixing-bowl when Uncle Jack's Jim arrived. ". . . bloody with spurring, fiery red with haste," - or the modern equivalent for it. Great-Uncle William Lesley was dying at the Head of the Bay, or thought he was. And he wanted to see Grandmother and Leander's wife. They must lose no time if they were to get there before he died.
It was a tragedy.
"I have never," said Grandmother in a tone of anguish as she tied on her bonnet, "gone away from home and left absolutely NO cake in the house."
"Surely no one will come to-day," moaned Mother, equally wretched. Really, it was a most inconvenient time for Great-Uncle to die.
"Don't forget to feed the cats," Grandmother told Marigold. "And mind you don't go wandering in Mr. Donkin's hill pasture. He's turned his ox in there."
"That's not his ox," said Marigold. "That's his old red bull."
Grandmother would have died before she would have said the word "bull" aloud. She drove away with Uncle Jack's Jim, sadly wondering what the young people of this generation were coming to. Apart from that she did not worry over leaving Marigold alone. Marigold was eleven now and tall for her age. One year she had been measured by the rose-bush - the next by the blue-bells. This year she was as tall as the phlox.
She liked being alone very well once in a while. It was quite important being in charge of Cloud of Spruce. She swept the kitchen, and got dinner for herself and Lazarre; she fed the cats and washed the dishes and wrote a letter to Paula.
Then the end of the world came. A car stopped at the gate; seven people descended therefrom and marched in past the platoons of hollyhocks with the air of people coming to stay. Marigold, staring aghast through the window, recognised them. She had met them all two weeks ago at a clan-funeral, where Grandmother had proffered them all a warm invitation to Cloud of Spruce. Second- Cousin Marcus Carter, his wife and son and daughter from Los Angeles; Second-Cousin Olivia Peake from Vancouver; AND Third- Cousin Dr. Palmer of Knox College, Toronto, with HIS wife.
And there was no cake at Cloud of Spruce!
Marigold accepted the situation. In that moment she had decided what she would do.