Something very strange happened the night old Mr. Lawrence died. I have never been able to explain it and I have never spoken of it except to one person and she said that I dreamed it. I did not dream it ... I saw and heard, waking.
We had not expected Mr. Lawrence to die then. He did not seem very ill ... not nearly so ill as he had been during his previous attack. When we heard of his illness I went over to Woodlands to see him, for I had always been a great favourite with him. The big house was quiet, the servants going about their work as usual, without any appearance of excitement. I was told that I could not see Mr. Lawrence for a little while, as the doctor was with him. Mrs. Yeats, the housekeeper, said the attack was not serious and asked me to wait in the blue parlour, but I preferred to sit down on the steps of the big, arched front door. It was an evening in June. Woodlands was very lovely; to my right was the garden, and before me was a little valley abrim with the sunset. In places under the big trees it was quite dark even then.
There was something unusually still in the evening ... a stillness as of waiting. It set me thinking of the last time Mr. Lawrence had been ill ... nearly a year ago in August. One night during his convalescence I had watched by him to relieve the nurse. He had been sleepless and talkative, telling me many things about his life.
Finally he told me of Margaret.
I knew a little about her ... that she had been his sweetheart and had died very young. Mr. Lawrence had remained true to her memory ever since, but I had never heard him speak of her before.
"She was very beautiful," he said dreamily, "and she was only eighteen when she died, Jeanette. She had wonderful pale-golden hair and dark-brown eyes. I have a little ivory miniature of her. When I die it is to be given to you, Jeanette. I have waited a long while for her.
You know she promised she would come."
I did not understand his meaning and kept silence, thinking that he might be wandering a little in his mind.
"She promised she would come and she will keep her word," he went on.
"I was with her when she died. I held her in my arms. She said to me, "Herbert, I promise that I will be true to you forever, through as many years of lonely heaven as I must know before you come. And when your time is at hand I will come to make your deathbed easy as you have made mine. I will come, Herbert." She solemnly promised, Jeanette. We made a death-tryst of it. And I know she will come."
He had fallen asleep then and after his recovery he had not alluded to the matter again. I had forgotten it, but I recalled it now as I sat on the steps among the geraniums that June evening. I liked to think of Margaret ... the lovely girl who had died so long ago, taking her lover"s heart with her to the grave. She had been a sister of my grandfather, and people told me that I resembled her slightly. Perhaps that was why old Mr. Lawrence had always made such a pet of me.
Presently the doctor came out and nodded to me cheerily. I asked him how Mr. Lawrence was.
"Better ... better," he said briskly. "He will be all right tomorrow.
The attack was very slight. Yes, of course you may go in. Don"t stay longer than half an hour."
Mrs. Stewart, Mr. Lawrence"s sister, was in the sickroom when I went in. She took advantage of my presence to lie down on the sofa a little while, for she had been up all the preceding night. Mr. Lawrence turned his fine old silver head on the pillow and smiled a greeting.
He was a very handsome old man; neither age nor illness had marred his finely modelled face or impaired the flash of his keen, steel-blue eyes. He seemed quite well and talked naturally and easily of many commonplace things.
At the end of the doctor"s half-hour I rose to go. Mrs. Stewart had fallen asleep and he would not let me wake her, saying he needed nothing and felt like sleeping himself. I promised to come up again on the morrow and went out.
It was dark in the hall, where no lamp had been lighted, but outside on the lawn the moonlight was bright as day. It was the clearest, whitest night I ever saw. I turned aside into the garden, meaning to cross it, and take the short way over the west meadow home. There was a long walk of rose bushes leading across the garden to a little gate on the further side ... the way Mr. Lawrence had been wont to take long ago when he went over the fields to woo Margaret. I went along it, enjoying the night. The bushes were white with roses, and the ground under my feet was all snowed over with their petals. The air was still and breezeless; again I felt that sensation of waiting ...
of expectancy. As I came up to the little gate I saw a young girl standing on the other side of it. She stood in the full moonlight and I saw her distinctly.
She was tall and slight and her head was bare. I saw that her hair was a pale gold, shining somewhat strangely about her head as if catching the moonbeams. Her face was very lovely and her eyes large and dark.
She was dressed in something white and softly shimmering, and in her hand she held a white rose ... a very large and perfect one. Even at the time I found myself wondering where she could have picked it. It was not a Woodlands rose. All the Woodlands roses were smaller and less double.
She was a stranger to me, yet I felt that I had seen her or someone very like her before. Possibly she was one of Mr. Lawrence"s many nieces who might have come up to Woodlands upon hearing of his illness.
As I opened the gate I felt an odd chill of positive fear. Then she smiled as if I had spoken my thought.
"Do not be frightened," she said. "There is no reason you should be frightened. I have only come to keep a tryst."
The words reminded me of something, but I could not recall what it was. The strange fear that was on me deepened. I could not speak.
She came through the gateway and stood for a moment at my side.
"It is strange that you should have seen me," she said, "but now behold how strong and beautiful a thing is faithful love--strong enough to conquer death. We who have loved truly love always--and this makes our heaven."
She walked on after she had spoken, down the long rose path. I watched her until she reached the house and went up the steps. In truth I thought the girl was someone not quite in her right mind. When I reached home I did not speak of the matter to anyone, not even to inquire who the girl might possibly be. There seemed to be something in that strange meeting that demanded my silence.
The next morning word came that old Mr. Lawrence was dead. When I hurried down to Woodlands I found all in confusion, but Mrs. Yeats took me into the blue parlour and told me what little there was to tell.
"He must have died soon after you left him, Miss Jeanette," she sobbed, "for Mrs. Stewart wakened at ten o"clock and he was gone. He lay there, smiling, with such a strange look on his face as if he had just seen something that made him wonderfully happy. I never saw such a look on a dead face before."
"Who is here besides Mrs. Stewart?" I asked.
"n.o.body," said Mrs. Yeats. "We have sent word to all his friends but they have not had time to arrive here yet."
"I met a young girl in the garden last night," I said slowly. "She came into the house. I did not know her but I thought she must be a relative of Mr. Lawrence"s."
Mrs. Yeats shook her head.
"No. It must have been somebody from the village, although I didn"t know of anyone calling after you went away."
I said nothing more to her about it.
After the funeral Mrs. Stewart gave me Margaret"s miniature. I had never seen it or any picture of Margaret before. The face was very lovely--also strangely like my own, although I am not beautiful. It was the face of the young girl I had met at the gate!
The Light on the Big Dipper
"Don"t let Nellie run out of doors, Mary Margaret, and be careful of the fire, Mary Margaret. I expect we"ll be back pretty soon after dark, so don"t be lonesome, Mary Margaret."
Mary Margaret laughed and switched her long, thick braid of black hair from one shoulder to the other.
"No fear of my being lonesome, Mother Campbell. I"ll be just as careful as can be and there are so many things to be done that I"ll be as busy and happy as a bee all day long. Nellie and I will have just the nicest kind of a time. I won"t get lonesome, but if I should feel just tempted to, I"ll think, Father is on his way home. He will soon be here." And that would drive the lonesomeness away before it dared to show its face. Don"t you worry, Mother Campbell."
Mother Campbell smiled. She knew she could trust Mary Margaret--careful, steady, prudent little Mary Margaret. Little! Ah, that was just the trouble. Careful and steady and prudent as Mary Margaret might be, she was only twelve years old, after all, and there would not be another soul besides her and Nellie on the Little Dipper that whole day. Mrs. Campbell felt that she hardly dared to go away under such circ.u.mstances. And yet she _must_ dare it. Oscar Bryan had sailed over from the mainland the evening before with word that her sister Nan--her only sister, who lived in Cartonville--was ill and about to undergo a serious operation. She must go to see her, and Uncle Martin was waiting with his boat to take her over to the mainland to catch the morning train for Cartonville.
If five-year-old Nellie had been quite well Mrs. Campbell would have taken both her and Mary Margaret and locked up the house. But Nellie had a very bad cold and was quite unfit to go sailing across the harbour on a raw, chilly November day. So there was nothing to do but leave Mary Margaret in charge, and Mary Margaret was quite pleased at the prospect.
"You know, Mother Campbell, I"m not afraid of anything except tramps.
And no tramps ever come to the Dippers. You see what an advantage it is to live on an island! There, Uncle Martin is waving. Run along, little mother."
Mary Margaret watched the boat out of sight from the window and then betook herself to the doing of her tasks, singing blithely all the while. It was rather nice to be left in sole charge like this--it made you feel so important and grown-up. She would do everything very nicely and Mother would see when she came back what a good housekeeper her daughter was.
Mary Margaret and Nellie and Mrs. Campbell had been living on the Little Dipper ever since the preceding April. Before that they had always lived in their own cosy home at the Harbour Head. But in April Captain Campbell had sailed in the _Two Sisters_ for a long voyage and, before he went, Mrs. Campbell"s brother, Martin Clowe, had come to them with a proposition. He ran a lobster cannery on the Little Dipper, and he wanted his sister to go and keep house for him while her husband was away. After some discussion it was so arranged, and Mrs. Campbell and her two girls moved to the Little Dipper. It was not a lonesome place then, for the lobstermen and their families lived on it, and boats were constantly sailing to and fro between it and the mainland. Mary Margaret enjoyed her summer greatly; she bathed and sailed and roamed over the rocks, and on fine days her Uncle George, who kept the lighthouse on the Big Dipper, and lived there all alone, often came over and took her across to the Big Dipper. Mary Margaret thought the lighthouse was a wonderful place. Uncle George taught her how to light the lamps and manage the light.
When the lobster season dosed, the men took up codfishing and carried this on till October, when they all moved back to the mainland. But Uncle Martin was building a house for himself at Harbour Head and did not wish to move until the ice formed over the bay because it would then be so much easier to transport his goods and chattels; so the Campbells stayed with him until the Captain should return.
Mary Margaret found plenty to do that day and wasn"t a bit lonesome.
But when evening came she didn"t feel quite so cheerful. Nellie had fallen asleep, and there wasn"t another living creature except the cat on the Little Dipper. Besides, it looked like a storm. The harbour was gla.s.sy calm, but the sky was very black and dour in the northeast--like snow, thought weather-wise Mary Margaret. She hoped her mother would get home before it began, and she wished the lighthouse star would gleam out on the Big Dipper. It would seem like the bright eye of a steady old friend. Mary Margaret always watched for it every night; just as soon as the sun went down the big lighthouse star would flash goldenly out in the northeastern sky.
"I"ll sit down by the window and watch for it," said Mary Margaret to herself. "Then, when it is lighted, I"ll get up a nice warm supper for Mother and Uncle Martin."
Mary Margaret sat down by the kitchen window to watch. Minute after minute pa.s.sed, but no light flashed out on the Big Dipper. What was the matter? Mary Margaret began to feel uneasy. It was too cloudy to tell just when the sun had set, but she was sure it must be down, for it was quite dark in the house. She lighted a lamp, got the almanac, and hunted out the exact time of sunsetting. The sun had been down fifteen minutes!