Chapter IX: 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.