Lucy Montgomery - Magic for Marigold

"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 to-night - 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 bearksin 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."

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."