A MYSTERY.
NEITHER light nor footsteps came again, though Margerie stood still,
watching and listening, until she lost all sensation of hands or feet.
Grandma snored on. Gradually the child's fear subsided; daylight was
beginning to peep at the windows. Those spring mornings were chilly,
and she felt very cold. With one fearful glance between the banisters
as she passed, Margerie sped back to her own room, sprang into bed, and
pulled the clothes over her head.
Then it was she recollected what her mother had said about the nearness
of the Lord Jesus. Home-sick though she had often been, she had never
thought about that very much until now. Loneliness and pain and fear
are indeed messengers of God; what we should do without them, I do not
know. Some of us, I am afraid, would never seek our Father's arms at
all.
And Margerie prayed:
"Oh, Lord Jesus, please take care of us. Don't let anything hurt us!"
Over and over again, until she felt confident and trustful enough to
put back the stifling bed-clothes and look out. A golden bar of dawning
sunshine was rippling on the wall.
I think if she could have reached, she would have got up and kissed the
lovely spot, she was so glad. It seemed like a little angel sent to
guard her. Who could be afraid with God's sweet sunshine in the room?
Fixing her loving, grateful eyes upon the growing radiance, she once
more fell peacefully asleep.
As soon as Margerie saw her grandmother in the morning, she told her
of what had occurred. Mrs. Grace eyed her keenly at first, and with
apparent interest, but soon turned away with a careless air, saying,
"You've been dreaming, child. Who should be walking about this house in
the middle of the night? You ate too much supper, that's what it was,
and had the nightmare."
"But, grandma, I'm sure I was awake," persisted Margerie earnestly.
"Nonsense! Don't pretend you know better than I do," rejoined the old
lady sharply. "And don't let me hear of any such foolishness again."
This was on Thursday. Margerie did not expect to see any of her family
until Sunday. The thought once crossed her mind that she would run home
instead of going to school, and pour out her tale of terror into her
mother's ever sympathetic ears. But she did not do so, partly because
she had an instinctive horror of anything underhanded, and partly
because she had an idea that if her grandmother found her out in such
a trick, she would be very angry, and perhaps refuse to have her back
again. And though, other considerations apart, Margerie would have felt
immensely relieved by such a catastrophe, she would not for the world
have done anything whereby the present friendly feeling between her
father and his long-estranged mother might be endangered. The little
girl did not think all this out in so many words, but she felt it, and
like a true little heroine, resolved for the sake of others to endure.
Thursday night and Friday night passed undisturbed, and Margerie was
even beginning to think she perhaps would not worry those at home by
mentioning that one unpleasant experience at all—it might never happen
again—when another strange thing occurred.
She was instructed to rise when grandma rang her chamber bell, which
was usually at half-past six in the morning, go downstairs and set
light to the fire which, under grandma's directions, she "laid" every
night before going to bed, and sweep and dust the parlour while the
kettle got hot, before the old lady came down. On Saturday morning, as
usual she went to wash her hands after these operations while grandma
set the table for breakfast. When she returned to the parlour, Mrs.
Grace said in a very stern voice: "Margerie, where is that currant roll
the baker gave you with the loaf yesterday?"
"I don't know, grandma," replied the little girl. "Isn't it in the
bread-pan?"
"No; or I should not ask you about it!" returned the old lady in a tone
of great displeasure.
Oh, how straight her back was then! Margerie had recently learned that
in most persons the backbone is composed of a great number of small
joints, but she felt sure that grandma's must have been made all in one
hard, stiff piece; there was not a bend in it anywhere.
She was very sorry for the disappearance of that little currant roll—it
was the only thing in the cake or confectionery line which had entered
the house since she had been an inmate, and she had regarded it with
a peculiarly affectionate gaze when putting it away, at grandma's
bidding, the day before. But the unspoken suspicion which Mrs. Grace's
manner reflected was infinitely worse.
On Saturdays they always had the best dinner of the week—the strange
old lady did not believe in very sumptuous fare—consisting of a joint
of meat and some kind of fruit pie, to be eaten cold on Sunday. On the
present occasion, it was shoulder of mutton and gooseberry-tart—one
helping of each. Two three-cornered pieces were thus cut out of the
pie, one for grandma and one for Margerie, and it was then put away.
On Sunday morning when our little girl and her grandmother had returned
from church, the former stood looking out of her bed-room window, and
hoping that the great blue-gray cloud which was gathering up would not
come down in rain until she could get safely home, for that Sunday
home-going was the hope and reward of the whole dreary week. But she
was more than half afraid. The cloud was turning from blue to black,
and the tangle of long grass and untrimmed bushes in the garden grew
every moment more gloomy beneath its shade.
I may here remark that the back garden was nearly as large as the
front, with which it communicated by means of a narrow alley on either
side of the house, the latter being wholly detached and standing in its
own ground. Against the wall at the bottom, which a centre tree almost
completely hid from the view of anyone in the house, was a tumble-down
arbour, only held together in the last stage of infirmity by a network
of creepers to which it had once given support.
"Margerie! Margerie!"
Grandma's voice was so extra sharp and imperative that the words
sounded like shots fired from below. The little girl flew down the
stairs to see what could be the matter.
The cloth for dinner was spread upon the table, yet nothing stood upon
it but the gooseberry pie. Grandma pointed to the latter with her
uninjured arm at full length.
"Look at that!" she commanded.
Margerie looked. The cavity in the crust was quite twice as large as it
had been when put away the day before.
Her grave gray eyes travelled in troubled wonderment from the pie to
grandma's stern face, then back to the pie again. She did not speak,
for she did not know what to say.
"What is the meaning of that?" queried the old lady in tones of
suppressed anger, and still pointing stonily to the yawning chasm in
the top crust.
"I—I don't know," faltered the little girl, her lips quivering with
coming tears.
"No falsehoods, wicked child!" exclaimed her grandmother. "You will say
next that I have eaten it myself. To be greedy and to steal is quite
bad enough without adding lies!"
"I'm not telling a falsehood!" sobbed poor Margerie. "I've not touched
the pie. And I didn't eat the currant roll. It—it must be the mice!"
"Mice wouldn't lift the cup to let the juice out," said Mrs. Grace
conclusively. "And that's what has been done here. And they wouldn't
leave the spoon they had used lying by the side. And they wouldn't have
picked the four shortcakes off the top, and carried them away!"
Mrs. Grace was dreadfully in earnest, but unfortunately the series
of pictures her words suggested presented themselves so vividly to
Margie's imagination that, unhappy as she was, she could not stifle a
half-hysterical laugh.
"Hardened little thing!" cried the old lady with increased indignation.
"Go to your room this moment, miss, and don't let me see you again till
you're sent for!"
"I 'didn't' touch the pie! I 'didn't,' I tell you!" protested Margerie,
emphasizing her words with a little stamp of her foot, for she was
totally unused to such accusations as this.
Her grandmother made no reply, but her long stiff arm was now pointing
immovably to the door. Cowed and heart-broken the child crept away,
just as the first flash of lightning illumined the twilight gloom, and
a cascade of rain-drops came rattling against the panes.
[Illustration]