"But I don"t want to play while you"re crying. I"m sure I could understand, dear little auntie."
Molly embraced the tall, gaunt figure of the aunt.
"Dear little auntie, tell Molly."
She used just the tone she was used to use to her baby brother.
"It"s--it"s business," said Aunt Maria, sniffing.
"I know business is dreadfully bad--father says so," said Molly. "Don"t send me away, auntie; I"ll be as quiet as a mouse. I"ll just sit and cuddle you till you feel better."
She got her arms round the aunt"s waist, and snuggled her head against a thin arm. Aunt Maria had always been one for keeping children in their proper places. Yet somehow now Molly"s proper place seemed to be just where she was--where she had never been before.
"You"re a kind little girl, Maria," she said presently.
"I wish I could do something," said Molly. "Wouldn"t you feel better if you told me? They say it does you good not to grieve in solitary concealment. I"m sure I could understand if you didn"t use long words."
And, curiously enough, Aunt Maria did tell her, almost exactly what she had heard from Clements.
"And I know there was a will leaving it all to your father and me," she said; "I saw it signed. It was witnessed by the butler we had then--he died the year after--and by Mr. Sheldon: he died, too, out hunting."
Her voice softened, and Molly snuggled closer and said:
"Poor Mr. Sheldon!"
"He and I were to have been married," said Aunt Maria suddenly. "That"s his picture in the hall between the carp and your Great-uncle Carruthers."
"Poor auntie!" said Molly, thinking of the handsome man in scarlet next the stuffed carp--"oh, poor auntie, I do love you so!"
Aunt Maria put an arm round her.
"Oh, my dear," she said, "you don"t understand. All the happy things that ever happened to me happened here, and all the sad things too; if they turn me out I shall die--I know I shall. It"s been bad enough," she went on, more to herself than to Molly; "but there"s always been the place just as it was when I was a girl, when he used to come here: so bold and laughing he always was. I can see him here quite plainly; I"ve only to shut my eyes. But I couldn"t see him anywhere else."
"Don"t wills get hidden away sometimes?" Molly asked; for she had read stories about such things.
"We looked everywhere," said Aunt Maria--"everywhere. We had detectives from London, because there were things he"d left to other people, and we wanted to carry out his wishes; but we couldn"t find it. Uncle must have destroyed it, and meant to make another, only he never did--he never did. Oh, I hope the dead can"t see what we suffer! If my Uncle Carruthers and dear James could see me turned out of the old place, it would break their hearts even up in heaven."
Molly was silent. Suddenly her aunt seemed to awake from a dream.
"Good gracious, child," she said, "what nonsense I"ve been talking! Go away and play, and forget all about it. Your own troubles will begin soon enough."
"I do love you, auntie," said Molly, and went.
Aunt Maria never unbent again as she had done that evening; but Molly felt a difference that made all the difference. She was not afraid of her aunt now, and she loved her. Besides, things were happening. The White House was now the most interesting place in the world.
Be sure that Molly set to work at once to look for the missing will.
London detectives were very careless; she was certain they were. She opened drawers and felt in the backs of cupboards; she prodded the padding of chairs, listening for the crackling of paper inside among the stuffing; she tapped the woodwork of the house all over for secret panels; but she did not find the will.
She could not believe that her Great-uncle Carruthers would have been so silly as to burn a will that he knew might be wanted at any moment. She used to stand in front of his portrait, and look at it; he did not look at all silly. And she used to look at the portrait of handsome, laughing Mr. Sheldon, who had been killed out hunting instead of marrying Aunt Maria, and more than once she said:
"You might tell me where it is; you look as if you knew."
But he never altered his jolly smile.
Molly thought of missing wills from the moment her eyes opened in the morning to the time when they closed at night.
Then came the dreadful day when Uncle Toodlethwaite and Mr. Bates came down, and Uncle Toodlethwaite said:
"I"m afraid there"s no help for it, Maria; you can delay the thing a bit, but you"ll have to turn out in the end."
It was on that night that the wonderful thing happened--the thing that Molly has never told to anyone except me, because she thought no one could believe it. She went to bed as usual and to sleep, and she woke suddenly, hearing someone call "Molly, Molly!"
She sat up in bed; the room was full of moonlight. As usual her first waking thought was of the missing will. Had it been found? Was her aunt calling her to tell the good news? No, the room was quite still. She was alone.
The moonlight fell full on the old black and red and gold cabinet; that, she had often thought, was just the place where a will would be hidden.
It might have a secret drawer, that the London detectives had missed.
She had often looked over it carefully, but now she got out of bed and lighted her candle, and went over to the cabinet to have one more look.
She opened all the drawers, pressed all the k.n.o.bs in the carved bra.s.swork. There was a little door in the middle; she knew that the little cupboard behind it was empty. It had red lacquered walls, and the back wall was looking-gla.s.s. She opened the little cupboard, held up her candle, and looked in. She expected to see her own face in the gla.s.s as usual, but she did not see it; instead there was a black s.p.a.ce, the opening to something not quite black. She could see lights--candle-lights--and the s.p.a.ce grew bigger, or she grew smaller, she never knew which. And next moment she was walking through the opening.
"Now I am going to see something really worth seeing," said Molly.
She was not frightened--from first to last she was not at all frightened.
She walked straight through the back of the cabinet in the best bedroom upstairs into the library on the ground-floor. That sounds like nonsense, but Molly declares it was so.
There were candles on the table and papers, and there were people in the library; they did not see her.
There was great-uncle Carruthers and Aunt Maria, very pretty, with long curls and a striped gray silk dress, like in the picture in the drawing-room. There was handsome, jolly Mr. Sheldon in a brown coat. An old servant was just going out of the door.
"That"s settled, then," said Great-uncle Carruthers; "now, my girl, bed."
Aunt Maria--such a young, pretty Aunt Maria, Molly would never have known her but for the portrait--kissed her uncle, and then she took a Christmas rose out of her dress and put it in Mr. Sheldon"s b.u.t.tonhole, and put up her face to him and said, "Good-night, James." He kissed her; Molly heard the loud, jolly sound of the kiss, and Aunt Maria went away.
Then the old man said: "You"ll leave this at Bates" for me, Sheldon; you"re safer than the post."
Handsome Mr. Sheldon said he would. Then the lights went out, and Molly was in bed again.
Quite suddenly it was daylight. Jolly Mr. Sheldon, in his red coat, was standing by the cabinet. The little cupboard door was open.
"By George!" he said, "it"s ten days since I promised to take that will up to Bates, and I never gave it another thought. All your fault, Maria, my dear. You shouldn"t take up all my thoughts; "I"ll take it to-morrow."
Molly heard something click, and he went out of the room whistling.
Molly lay still. She felt there was more to come. And the next thing was that she was looking out of the window, and saw something carried across the lawn on a hurdle with two scarlet coats laid over it, and she knew it was handsome Mr. Sheldon, and that he would not carry the will to Bates to-morrow, or do anything else in this world ever any more.
When Molly woke in the morning she sprang out of bed and ran to the cabinet. There was nothing in the looking-gla.s.s cupboard.
All the same, she ran straight to her aunt"s room. It was long before the hour when Clements soberly tapped, bringing hot water.