"See, come close to the door, and Kitty will tell you what to do."
But these mysterious voices speaking out of the unseen frightened
Marianne too much to allow of her doing anything helpful.
"I tan't! I tan't!" she wailed, not venturing near the door.
"Oh, do try, please do!" pleaded Lois. "I'll give you my china doll if
you will, Marianne."
"And I'll give you my doll's bedstead," added Emmy. "You'd like that, I
know. Dear little Marianne, do try to let us out. Please do. We're so
tired of this old closet."
But still Marianne repeated, "Tan't, tan't." And at last she sat down on
the floor and wept. The imprisoned children wept with her.
"I've thought of a plan," said Emmy at last. "If you'll break one of the
teeth out of your shell comb, Lois, I think I can push it through the
hole and raise the latch up."
Alas! the hole was above the latch, not below it. Half the teeth were
broken out of Lois's comb in their attempt, and with no result except
that they fell through the hole to the floor outside. At intervals they
renewed their banging and pounding on the door, but it only tired them
out, and did no good.
It was a very warm afternoon, and, as time went on, the closet became
unendurably hot. Emmy sank down exhausted on the floor, and she and
Kitty began to sob wildly. Lois alone kept her calmness. Little Marianne
had grown wonderfully quiet. Peeping through the hole, Lois saw that she
had gone to sleep on the floor.
"Don't cry so, Kitty," she said. "It's no use. We were naughty to come
here. I suppose we've got to die in this closet, and it is my fault. We
shall starve to death pretty soon, and no one will know what has become
of us till somebody takes the house; and when they come to clean it and
they open the closet door, they will find our bones."
Kitty screamed louder than ever at this terrible picture.
"Oh, hush!" said her cousin. "The only thing we can do now is to pray.
God is the only person that can help us. Mamma says he is close to every
person who prays. He can hear us if we are in the closet."
Then Lois made this little prayer:--
"Our Father who art in heaven. We have been naughty, and came down here
when mamma didn't give us leave to come; but please forgive us. We won't
disobey again, if only Thou wilt. We make a promise. Help us. Show us
the way to get out of this closet. Don't let us die here, with no one to
know where we are. We ask it for Jesus Christ's sake. Forever and
forever. Amen."
It was a droll little prayer, but Lois put all her heart into it. A
human listener might have smiled at the odd turn of the phrases; but God
knew what she meant, and he never turns away from real prayer. He
answered Lois.
How did he answer her? Did he send a strong angel to lift up the latch
of the door? He might have done that, you know, as he did for Peter in
prison. But that was not the way he chose in this instance. What he did
was to put a thought into Lois's mind.
She stood silent for a while after she had finished praying.
"Children," she said, "I have thought of something. Kitty, you are the
lightest. Do you think Emmy and I could push you up on to the shelf?"
It was not an easy thing to do, for the place was narrow; but at last,
with Lois and Emmy "boosting," and Kitty scrambling, it was
accomplished.
"Now, Kitty, put your back against the wall," said Lois, "and when I say
'One, two, three,' push the door with your feet as hard as you can,
while we push below."
Kitty braced herself, and at the word "three," they all exerted their
utmost strength. One second more, and--oh, joy!--the latch gave way, and
the door flew open. Kitty tumbled from the shelf, the others fell
forward on the floor,--they were out! Lois had bumped her head, and
Emmy's shoulder was bruised; but what was that? They were free.
"Let us run, run!" cried Lois, catching Marianne up in her arms. "I
never want to see this horrible house again."
So they ran downstairs, and out through the wood-shed into the open air.
Oh, how sweet the sunshine looked, and the wind felt, after their fear
and danger!
Their mother taught them a little verse next morning, after they had
told her all about their adventure and made confession of their fault;
and Lois said it to herself every day all her life afterward. This is
it:--
"God is never far away;
God is listening all the day.
When we tremble, when we fear,
The dear Lord is quick to hear,--
Quick to hear, and quick to save,
Quick to grant each prayer we make,
For the precious Gift he gave,
For his Son our Saviour's sake."
"I love that hymn," Lois used to say; "and I know it's true, because God
heard us just as well in that little bit of a closet as if we had been
in church!"
A CHILD OF THE SEA FOLK.
The great storm of 1430 had done its worst. For days the tempest had
raged on land and sea, and when at last the sun struggled through the
clouds, broken now and flying in angry masses before the strong sea
wind, his beams revealed a scene of desolation.
All along the coast of Friesland the dikes were down, and the salt water
washing over what but a few days before had been vegetable-gardens and
fertile fields. The farm-houses on the higher ground stood each on its
own little island as it were, with shallow waves breaking against the
walls of barns and stoned sheepfolds lower down on the slopes. Already
busy hands were at work repairing the dykes. Men in boats were wading up
to their knees in mud and water, men, swimming their horses across the
deeper pools, were carrying materials and urging on the work, but many
days must pass before the damage could be made good; and meanwhile, how
were people to manage for food and firing, with the peat-stacks under
water, and the cabbages and potatoes spoiled by the wet?
"There is just this one thing," said Metje Huyt to her sister
Jacqueline. "Little Karen shall have her cup of warm milk to-night if
everybody else goes without supper; on that I am determined."
"That will be good, but how canst thou manage it?" asked Jacqueline, a
gentle, placid girl of sixteen, with a rosy face and a plait of thick,
fair hair hanging down to her waist. Metje was a year younger, but she
ruled her elder sister with a rod of iron by virtue of her superior
activity and vivacity of mind.
"I shall manage it in this way,--I shall milk the Electoral Princess."
"But she is drowned," objected Jacqueline, opening wide a pair of
surprised blue eyes.
"Drowned? Not at all. She is on that little hump of land over there
which looks like an island, but is really Neighbor Livard's high
clover-patch. I mean to row out and milk her, and thou shalt go with
me."
"Art thou sure that it is the Electoral Princess, and not any other
cow?" asked Jacqueline.
"Sure? Have I not a pair of eyes in my head? Sure? Don't I know the
twist of our own cow's horns? Oh, Jacque, Jacque,--what were thy blue
saucers given thee for? Thee never seemest to use them to purpose.
However, come along. Karen must not want for her milk any longer. The
mother was making some gruel-water for her when I came away, and Karen
did not like it, and was crying."
Some wading was necessary to reach the row-boat, which fortunately had
been dragged up to the great barn for repairs before the storm began,
and so had escaped the fate which had befallen most of the other boats
in the neighborhood,--of being swept out to sea in the reflux of the
first furious tide. The barn was surrounded by water now, but it was
nowhere more than two or three inches deep. And pulling off their wooden
shoes, the sisters splashed through it with merry laughter. Like most
Friesland maidens, they were expert with the oar, and, though the waves
were still rough, they made their way without trouble to the wet green
slope where the Electoral Princess was grazing, raising her head from
time to time to utter a long melancholy moo of protest at the long delay
of her milkers. Very glad was she to see the girls, and she rubbed her
head contentedly against Jacqueline's shoulder while Metje, with gentle,
skilful fingers, filled the pail with foaming milk.
"Now stay quietly and go on eating Friend Livard's clover, since no
better may be," she said, patting the cow's red side. "The water is
going down, the dikes are rebuilding, presently we will come and take
thee back to the home field. Meanwhile each day Jacque and I will row
out and milk thee; so be a good cow and stay contentedly where thou
art."
"What can that be?" Jacqueline asked after the sisters had proceeded a
short distance on their homeward way.
"What?"
"That thing over there;" and she pointed toward a distant pool some
quarter of a mile from them and still nearer to the sea. "It looks
like--like--oh! Metje, do you think it can be some one who has been
drowned?"
"No,--for it moves,--it lifts its arm," said Metje, shading her eyes
from the level rays of the sun, and looking steadily seaward.
"It is a girl! She is caught by the tide in the pool. Row, Jacqueline,
row! the tide turns in half an hour, and then she will be drowned
indeed. The water was very deep out there last night when the flood was
full; I heard Voorst say so."
The heavy boat flew forward, for the sisters bent to the oars with all
their strength. Jacqueline turned her head from time to time, to judge
of their direction and the distance.
"It's no neighbor," she answered as they drew nearer. "It's no one I
ever saw before. Metje, it is the strangest-looking maiden you ever saw.
Her hair is long,--so long, and her face is wild to look upon. I am
afraid."
"Never mind her hair. We must save her, however long it is," gasped
Metje, breathless from the energy of her exertions. "Steady, now,
Jacque, here we are; hold the boat by the reeds. Girl! I say, girl, do
you hear me? We are come to help you."
The girl, for a girl it was who half-sat, half-floated in the pool,
raised herself out of the water as one alive, and stared at the sisters
without speaking. She was indeed a wild and strange-looking creature,
quite different from any one that they had ever seen before.
"Well, are you not going to get into the boat?" cried Metje; "are you
deaf, maiden, that you do not answer me? You'll be drowned presently,
though you swam like forty fishes, for the tide will be coming in like
fury through yon breach in the dike. Here, let me help you; give me your
hand."
The strange girl did not reply, but she seemed to understand a part, at
least, of what was said to her. She moaned, her face contracted as if
with pain, and, raising herself still farther from the water with an
effort, she indicated by signs that she was caught in the mud at the
bottom of the pool and could not set herself free.
This was a serious situation, for, as Metje well knew, the mud was deep
and adhesive. She sat a moment in thought; then she took her oar, forced
the boat still nearer, and, directing Jacqueline to throw her weight on
the farther edge to avoid an upset, she grasped the cold hands which the
stranger held out, and, exerting her full strength, drew her from the
mud and over the side of the boat. It rocked fearfully under her
weight, the milk splashed from the pail, but the danger was over in half
a minute, and the rescued girl, exhausted and half-dead, lay safely on
the bottom.
"Dear me, she will freeze," cried Jacqueline hastily; for the poor thing
they had saved was without clothing, save for the long hair which hung
about her like a mantle. "Here, Metje, I can spare my cloak to wrap
round her limbs, and she must put on thy jacket. We will row the harder
to keep ourselves warm."
Rowing hard was indeed needful, for, summer as it was, the wind, as the
sun sank, blew in icy gusts from the Zetland Zee, whirling the sailless
windmills rapidly round, and sending showers of salt spray over the
walls of the sheepfolds and other outlying enclosures. The sisters were
thoroughly chilled before they had pulled the boat up to a place of
safety and helped the half-drowned stranger across the wet slope of
grass to the house door.
Their mother was looking out for them.
"Where hast thou been, children?" she asked. "Ach!" with a look of
satisfaction as Metje slipped the handle of the milk-pail between her
fingers. "That is well! Little Karen was wearying for her supper. But
who hast thou here?" looking curiously at the odd figure whom her
daughters were supporting.
"Oh, mother, it is a poor thing that we saved from drowning in that pool
over there," explained Metje, pointing seaward. "She is a stranger, from
far away it must be, for she understands not our speech, and answers
nothing when we ask her questions."
"Dear me! what should bring a stranger here at this stormy time? But
whoever she is, she must needs be warmed and fed." And the good Vrow
hurried them all indoors, where a carefully economized fire of peats was
burning. The main stock of peats was under water still, and it behooved
them to be careful of what remained, the father had said.
"We shall have to lend her some clothes," said Metje in an embarrassed
tone. "Hers must have been lost in the water somehow."
"Perhaps she went in to bathe, and the tide carried them away,"
suggested Jacqueline.
"Bathe! In a tempest such as there has not been in my time! Bathe! Thou
art crazed, child! It is singular, most singular. I don't like it!"
muttered the puzzled mother. "Well, what needs be must be. Go and fetch
thy old stuff petticoat, Metje, and one of my homespun shifts, and
there's that old red jacket of Jacqueline's, she must have that, I
suppose. Make haste, before the father comes in."
It was easier to fetch the clothes than to persuade the strange girl to
put them on. She moaned, she resisted, she was as awkward and ill at
ease as though she had never worn anything of the sort before. Now that
they scanned her more closely there seemed something very unusual about
her make. Her arms hung down,--like flippers, Metje whispered to her
sister. She stumbled when she tried to walk alone; it seemed as though
her feet, which looked only half developed, could scarcely support her
weight.
For all that, when she was dressed, with her long hair dried, braided,
and bound with a scarlet ribbon, there was something appealing and
attractive in the poor child's face. She seemed to like the fire, and
cowered close to it. When milk was offered her, she drank with avidity;
but she would not touch the slice of black bread which Metje brought,
and instead caught up a raw shell-fish from a pail full which Voorst
had scooped out of the pool of sea-water which covered what had been the
cabbage-bed, and ate it greedily. The mother looked grave as she watched
her, and was troubled in her mind.
"She seems scarce human," she whispered to Metje, drawing her to a
distant corner; though indeed they might have spoken aloud with no fear
of being understood by the stranger, who evidently knew no Dutch. "She
is like no maiden that ever I saw."
"Perhaps she is English," suggested Metje, who had never seen any one
from England, but had vaguely heard that it was an odd country quite
different from Friesland.
The mother shook her head: "She is not English. I have seen one English
that time that thy father and I went to Haarlem about thy grand-uncle's
inheritance. It was a woman, and she was not at all like this girl.
Metje, but that thou wouldst laugh, and Father Pettrie might reprove me
for vain imaginations, I should guess her to be one of those mermaidens
of whom our forefathers have told us. There are such creatures,--my
mother's great-aunt saw one with her own eyes, and wrote it down, and
my mother kept the paper. Often have I read it over. It was off the
Texel."
"Could she really be that? Why, it would be better--more interesting, I
mean--than to have her an Englishwoman," cried Metje. "We would teach
her to spin, to knit. She should go with us to church and learn the Ave.
Would it not be a good and holy work, mother, to save the soul of a poor
wild thing from the waves where they know not how to pray?"
"Perhaps," replied the Vrow, doubtfully. She could not quite accustom
herself to her own suggestion, yet could not quite dismiss it from her
mind.
The father and Voorst now came in, and supper, delayed till after its
usual time by the pressing needs of the stranger, must be got ready in
haste.
Metje fell to slicing the black loaf, Jacqueline stirred the porridge,
while the mother herself presided over the pot of cabbage-soup which had
been stewing over the fire since early morning. Voorst, meanwhile,
having nothing to do but to wait, sat and looked furtively at the
strange girl. She did not seem to notice him, but remained motionless in
the chimney-corner, only now and then giving a startled sudden glance
about the room, like some wild creature caught in a trap. Voorst thought
he had never seen anything so plaintive as her large, frightened eyes,
or so wonderful as the thick plait of hair which, as she sat, lay on the
ground, and was of the strangest pale color, like flax on which a
greenish reflection is accidentally thrown. It was no more like Metje's
ruddy locks, or the warm fairness of Jacqueline's braids, than moonlight
is like dairy butter, he said to himself.
Supper ready, Metje took the girl's hand and led her to the table. She
submitted to be placed on a wooden stool, and looked curiously at the
bowl of steaming broth which was set before her; but she made no attempt
to eat it, and seemed not to know the use of her spoon. Metje tried to
show her how to hold it, but she only moaned restlessly, and, as soon as
the family moved after the father had pronounced the Latin grace which
Father Pettrie taught all his flock to employ, she slipped from her seat
and stumbled awkwardly across the floor toward the fire, which seemed to
have a fascination for her.
"Poor thing! she seems unlearnt in Christian ways," said Goodman Huyt;
but later, when his wife confided to him her notion as to the
stranger's uncanny origin, he looked perplexed, crossed himself, and
said he would speak to the priest in the morning. It was no time for
fetching heathen folk into homes, he remarked, still less those who were
more fish than folk; as for mermaids, if such things there might be,
they were no better in his opinion than dolphins or mackerel, and he did
not care to countenance them.
Father Pettrie was duly consulted. He scouted the mermaid theory, and,
as the Vrow had foreboded, gave her a reprimand for putting such ideas
into the mind of her family.
The girl was evidently a foreigner from some far distant country, he
said, a Turk it might be, or a daughter of that people, descended from
Ishmael, who held rule in the land of the Holy Sepulchre. All the more
it became a duty to teach her Christian ways and bring her into the true
fold; and he bade Goodman Huyt to keep her till such time as her friends
should be found, to treat her kindly, and make sure that she was brought
regularly to church and taught religion and her duty.
There was no need of this admonition as to kindness. Vrow Huyt could
hardly have used a stray dog less than tenderly. And for Jacqueline and
Metje, they looked upon the girl as their own special property, and were
only in danger of spoiling her with over-indulgence. "Ebba," they called
her, as they knew no name by which to address her, and in course of time
she learned to recognize it as hers and to answer to it,--answer by
looks and signs, that is, for she never learned to speak, or to make
other sound than inarticulate moans and murmurs, except a wild sort of
laughter, and now and then, when pleased and contented, a low humming
noise like an undeveloped song. From these the family could guess at her
mood, from her expressive looks and gestures they made shift to
understand her wishes, and she, in turn, comprehended their meaning half
by observation, half by instinct; but closer communication was not
possible, and the lack of a common speech was a barrier between them
which neither she nor they could overcome.
Gradually "Dumb Ebba," as the neighbors called her, was taught some of
the thrifty household arts in which Dame Huyt excelled. She learned to
spin, and though less expertly, to knit, and could be trusted to stir
whatever was set upon the fire to cook, and not let it burn or boil
over. When the family went to mass, she went too, limping along with
painful slowness on her badly-formed feet, and she bowed her head and
knelt with the rest, but how much or how little she understood they
could not tell. Except on Sundays she never left the house. Her first
attempts at doing so were checked by Metje, who could not dismiss from
her memory what her mother had said, and was afraid to let her charge so
much as look toward the tempting blue waves which shone in the distance;
and after a while Ebba seemed to realize that she was, so to speak, a
kindly treated captive, and resigned herself to captivity. Little Karen
was the only creature whom she played with; sometimes when busied with
the child she was noticed to smile, but for every one else her face
remained pitifully sad, and she never lost the look of a wild,
imprisoned thing.
So two years passed, and still Dumb Ebba remained, unclaimed by friends
or kindred, one of the friendly Huyt household. The dikes were long
since rebuilt, the Electoral Princess had come back to her own
pasture-ground and fed there contentedly in company with two of her own
calves, but the poor sea-stray whom Metje had pulled into the boat that
stormy night remained speechless, inscrutable, a mystery and a
perplexity to her adopted family.
But now a fresh interest arose to rival Ebba's claims on their
attention. A wooer came for pretty Jacqueline. It was young Hans Polder,
son of a thrifty miller in the neighborhood, and himself owner of one of
the best windmills in that part of Friesland. Jacqueline was not hard to
win, the wedding-day was set, and she, Metje, and the mother were busy
from morning till night in making ready the store of household linen
which was the marriage portion of all well-to-do brides. Ebba's services
with the wheel were also put into requisition; and part of her spinning,
woven into towels, which, after a fancy of Metje's, had a pattern of
little fish all over them, were known for generations as "the Mermaid's
towels." But this is running far in advance of my story.
Amid this press of occupation Ebba was necessarily left to herself more
than formerly, and some dormant sense of loneliness, perhaps, made her
turn to Voorst as a friend. He had taken a fancy to her at the
first,--the sort of fancy which a manly youth sometimes takes to a
helpless child,--and had always treated her kindly. Now she grew to
feel for him a degree of attachment which she showed for no one else. In
the evening, when tired after the day's fishing he sat half asleep by
the fire, she would crouch on the floor beside him, watching his every
movement, and perfectly content if, on waking, he threw her a word or
patted her hair carelessly. She sometimes neglected to fill the father's
glass or fetch his pipe, but never Voorst's; and she heard his footsteps
coming up from the dike long before any one else in the house could
catch the slightest footfall.
The strict watch which the family had at first kept over their singular
inmate had gradually relaxed, and Ebba was suffered to go in and out at
her will. She rarely ventured beyond the house enclosure, however, but
was fond of sitting on the low wall of the sheep-fold and looking off at
the sea, which, now that the flood had subsided, was at a long distance
from the house. And at such moments her eyes looked larger, wilder, and
more wistful than ever.
As the time for the wedding drew near, Voorst fell into the way of
absenting himself a good deal from home. There were errands to be done,
he said, but as these "errands" always took him over to the little
island of Urk, where lived a certain pretty Olla Tronk, who was
Jacqueline's great friend and her chosen bridesmaiden, the sisters
naturally teased him a good deal about them. Ebba did not, of course,
understand these jokings, but she seemed to feel instinctively that
something was in the air. She grew restless, the old unhappy moan came
back to her lips; only when Voorst was at home did she seem more
contented.