CHAPTER I.
Mrs. C. M. Livingston.
THERE is no denying that it was very hard for Margaret Moore to give up spending the winter with Aunt Cornelia, and, instead, stay at home and wait on her step-mother through a tedious illness. When once she had made up her mind to it, she thought the battle of life was ended and all would hereafter go smoothly with her. Surely she could meet and conquer anything after that. And who can tell what she might not have done if she had kept close to Jesus? but young disciples—and old ones, too—wander from him and forget that it is he they are to trust, and not their own good resolutions.
Margaret forgot this, and so fell into many snares. In the first place, she began to feel she was very good. Instead of thinking about Jesus, what a wonderful Saviour he was, she thought about herself and wondered if everybody did not think she was a self-denying, noble girl to bear disappointments and perform disagreeable duties so patiently. She felt very strong and was sure she should never be cross or angry again. And indeed for a time everything went well. She was patient when waiting on her step-mother and kind to her brothers. Even Johnnie had not power to put her into a rage, although he put burs in her hair and untied her apron strings. There was one thing Margaret chafed under, and that was having Amelia Barrows, her step-mother’s sister, come to keep house for them. Her good resolutions in no wise extended to that person. She had made her mind up very hard that she should not call her “Aunt Amelia.” “She was not her aunt, and never could be,” and “she should not be under orders to her;” not that she would not treat her well, but she should be dignified and give her to understand that she was not such a very little girl. “Thirteen and a half was nearly fourteen—almost a young lady, she was.”
Amelia Barrows was a young woman with eyes and brows as black as Margaret’s own, and a will quite as positive. So it was to be expected that there would be some jarring.
The hardest part of it all to Margaret was that she was obliged to share her room with Amelia. It was a large old house, but there were not a great number of chambers, because they were all large except the hall bedroom. When the minister came Mrs. Moore gave that to him for his library. So there really was no other place for Amelia. Margaret knew it could not be helped, and yet it was so hard to feel that her room was not her very own private room any more. She prided herself greatly on it, and she really did deserve great credit for its cheerful prettiness.
It was only a plain, square room with white-washed walls and a straw matting on the floor, but there were two pleasant windows with cheap white muslin curtains, and the bed was daintily dressed in white and blue. The rocker was covered with blue cretonne, and there were blue mats on the bureau. A bright home-made rug on the floor, small pictures on the walls, and a set of shelves in the corner filled with books; then, in winter, there was always a pleasant sense of warmth because the stovepipe came through from the sitting-room. Altogether, it was quite a cosey place and Margaret was always glad to flee to it and shut herself in from all annoyances. She thought it the prettiest, pleasantest room in the world, and one reason was because it was always in order. Carefulness, when once learned, becomes a habit, and is easier than carelessness. Young as Margaret was when her mother died, she had been taught by her to sweep and dust her own little room, and to hang her clothes at night on hooks placed within her reach, and always to put a thing in its place after using it. She had, besides, inherited dainty tastes and neat ways from her mother, so it was not such a task for her to be orderly as it was for some others.
And so it was with a pang that she saw Amelia walk into her room and take possession with the air of one who had a right there.
It is not easy work to wait upon a sick person, so you must not suppose that Margaret had nothing to do but sit within call in her step-mother’s room handing her something occasionally. She had to take the place of a nurse, young as she was, in the best way she could, for Amelia had her hands full with the housekeeping. It was hard work, and Margaret was often very tired. There was the room to be put in order every morning, and Mrs. Moore was a very particular housekeeper; not a speck of dust, or spot on window or mirror, escaped her keen glance. There was much running up and down-stairs, too, for hot water and cold water; there was liniment and mustard and draughts to be applied by turns to the aching limbs, and sometimes nothing helped; the pain grew worse instead of better, and the patient was not patient, but let fall sharp words at Margaret’s blunders, whereupon poor Margaret blundered still more, and did not give soft answers. Some days, though, everything went well, and her step-mother felt that Margaret really was very different from what she used to be. She was gentle and patient and tried hard to please. The reason was plain; those were the days when she remembered to get her verse from the Bible and think about it, then asked Jesus to keep her, and remembered, too, when temptation came to call to Him to help her. But some mornings she forgot all about it, or she spent too much time curling her hair, or trifling in some way till it was too late, and she had to hurry down-stairs with all speed. There would be time for it after breakfast, she thought, but then it was put off from hour to hour, and perhaps she ended by not doing it at all. When this happened she was fretful and unhappy; nothing went right with her. God made the body so that it cannot go without food at regular times, and keep in order. He made the soul in the same way. It must get food from the Bible, and by thinking about God and speaking to him, or it cannot be a healthy soul. This poor little Christian knew she must eat her breakfast or she would feel faint and weak by ten o’clock, but she had not learned that she must not starve the other and better part of herself. So it was no wonder that she did not always do right.
One reason why it was particularly hard now was that two of her best friends were away. Elmer Newton’s older brother was obliged, from ill health, to spend the winter in the South, and wished to have Elmer with him. Mrs. Duncan felt anxious about her sick brother, and at the last decided to accompany them and remain a few weeks, which lengthened into months. This made a lonely, gloomy time for Margaret, she had come to depending so much upon their help and counsel. She felt as if there was nobody to go to with her troubles and doubts. Mr. Wakefield was always kind, but she stood in a little awe of him because he was the minister, and so, unless strongly excited, was too timid to talk freely with him.
When a girl of thirteen resolves to be dignified toward any body it means that she is going to make herself very disagreeable whether she knows it or not. Amelia Barrows was not an ill-natured young woman, and if Margaret had tried she might have made a friend of her. As it was, Margaret forgot that she was herself several years the younger. She assumed airs of importance, and found fault. She laid down laws about her room, and called Amelia to account if a brush or a chair was not in its exact place.
“See here, young woman!” Amelia said one day, losing all patience, “you’d better stop your high airs. A piece of this room belongs to me while I stay here, and I’m going to do exactly as I please in it. I don’t want to be in it, or in this house, either, but I’m here, and we’ve both got to stand it. I never wanted my sister to marry your father any more than you did,—not as I have anything against him,—but I told her she might as well put her head into a hornets’ nest as to try to manage three saucy young ones. No wonder she’s sick!”
There is no telling what Margaret would have said then if Amelia had not gone out and banged the door after her. She was angry enough to have said anything. To be called “a saucy young one” when she had borne everything, and was almost as tall as a woman; it was too much!
“O, dear!” she sighed, bursting into tears, “I wish she wasn’t here. She’s perfectly horrid!”
When she went down to the well-cooked dinner a couple of hours afterward she forgot to ask herself how they could possibly get along comfortably without Amelia.
There were afternoons when Amelia had leisure to stay with her sister and Margaret was at liberty. One day she went to take a walk, and was sauntering slowly along when Hester Andrews tapped on the window and beckoned her in. Margaret hesitated. She had not been going much with Hester of late, but she finally went into the house. “You poor thing!” Hester said, meeting her with a kiss, “I wonder if you have got out at last! It is just too bad for you to be shut up in the house all winter, waiting on somebody who’s nothing to you; all the neighbors say it’s a shame, and mother says that it is entirely too hard for you.”
SHE MUST BE ALONE SOMEWHERE.
Poor Margaret! She had been trying all day to get the better of her discontent and ugly feelings. Now, they sprang up anew. She looked about the pleasant parlor where Hester sat at her fancy work. Hester seemed to her to have everything she wanted, and to do just as she pleased. How different it was with her! How hard her life was! It had not occurred to her how hard till Hester put it into words.
“If it was your own mother, now,” Hester went on, “why of course you would expect to do all you could, but now, it’s just dreadful. I’d like to see my father put a step-mother over me if my mother was gone—and make a slave of me waiting on her! I’d go out and scrub for a living first.”
Margaret ought to have known, by this time, that Hester always did her harm and not good, and have had courage enough to shun her company. She went into that house in a good frame of mind; she came away feeling that she was a much-abused girl: one who had a bitter lot; and she pitied herself.
If Satan had hired Hester to do some ugly work for him, to spoil Margaret’s peace and draw her away from God, it could not have been better managed, for, besides all the wicked things she had said, she did something more. As Margaret was about to leave,—after having poured into Hester’s sympathizing ears a long story about Amelia and all she had to bear from her,—Hester said, “Wait a minute, Mag. I’ve got a perfectly splendid book, and I’ll let you take it, if you haven’t read it. You’ve got to have something to cheer you up or you’ll die.”
Margaret seized it eagerly. She saw at a glance it was a novel. She had read enough of them to spoil her taste for more solid reading, and to know that she liked them far better than anything else. She felt guilty in taking it, because she had promised Elmer when he went away to read only what would be of benefit. How did she know, though, she told herself, but there was something good in this book? She remembered, too, with a twinge of remorse, that she had not yet touched the books Mrs. Duncan left for her to read, except to look through them and pronounce them “dry.” She meant to read them before the lady returned, but just now she must have a real story to cheer her. Anybody who has read “Madam How and Lady Why,” “A Family Flight,” and “Harry’s Vacation,” knows of what delightful reading Margaret had deprived herself all this time.
The next morning when the room was in order and Mrs. Moore was taking a nap, Margaret brought her basket of work and drew up to the fire, planning for a good time, not with her mending, though. “The Deserted Wife”—Hester’s book—was in the bottom of the basket, well covered with stockings. The fact that it was so hidden, and that she drew a tall rocker between the bed and herself, proved that her conscience was not altogether clear. However, she was soon lost in her book. She did not raise her eyes or move a muscle, except to turn over the leaves for a long time; she even forgot to breathe except by irregular gasps; she read with feverish haste, because her step-mother might waken at any moment and require her help, and she must know what happened next.
If Hester had but placed a live coal in her hands instead of this book! She would have dropped that instantly and have burned only her fingers. This tale of sin and shame and crime might leave scars on her soul forever.
Mrs. Moore had an unusually long sleep, for two hours had passed away when Margaret was startled by her voice, saying,—
“Seems to me it is cold here. Has the fire gone out? Where are you, Margaret?”
Sure enough, the wood fire had burned to ashes, and the room was quite chilly. Margaret hid away her book and went for kindlings. They were wet, and the fire smoked and sulked, but did not burn for a long time. Her father came in to dinner before the chill was off the room. He noticed it, for it was a raw, windy day, and told Margaret, rather sharply, that her mother’s room ought not to become cold like that, and there was no need of it if she had attended to the fire as she should. Margaret could never bear to have her father speak sternly to her. She went off to her room in a tempest of tears, telling herself, amid sobs—as foolish girls do at such times—that there was nobody to love her.
This was only one of the many difficulties she brought herself into during the next few weeks. She plunged into a perfect whirlpool of novel reading. As fast as one book was devoured Hester provided another. She read “The Fatal Marriage,” “The Terrible Secret,” “A Bridge of Love,” “Lady Gwendoline’s Dream,” and “Lord Lynn’s Choice,” besides many more. She read while she was dressing, and snatched every moment through the day. She even sat up nights and pored over those fascinating books, when she should have been sleeping. Sometimes she stole out in the evening and walked up and down the street with Hester, and talked them over. So she constantly lived in another world. She was in a frenzy of eagerness to get through whatever she was doing, and drown all her senses in a book. As a natural consequence, nothing went well with her. She hated her lot and its duties. She longed to get away and live with the beautiful, unreal people she had read about.
Novel-readers are usually cross. Poor Margaret was very cross. She disputed constantly with Weston, and boxed Johnnie’s ears when he teased her. He turned everything into rhymes, so when he had succeeded in putting her into a rage, he would leave off singing,
“Aunt Ameliar,
She’s a pealer,”
and would dance about Margaret, shouting in her ears,
“Mag is mad,
And I am glad.”
This would make Margaret very angry, and sometimes the two had what Amelia called “a scuffle.” She would interfere at last and declare, as Johnnie ran off laughing, that Margaret was the “worst of the whole pack if she was a church member. She would rather be nothing than a hypocrite.”
And Margaret in these days was impertinent to her step-mother and jerked things about in a way that is very trying to a sick person. She left undone all she possibly could, allowed great holes to come in her stockings, and went about slip-shod, with the buttons nearly gone from her shoes, and did not take the “stitch in time” that “saves nine.” There were worse neglects, too.
Since this fatal disease of novel-reading had come upon her she did not read her Bible scarcely at all. On Sunday afternoons she held it a while and gazed out of the window, then went hurriedly through a chapter without knowing a word that was in it. As if the Bible would do one any more good than the geography unless its words were understood and treasured up.
It was the same with prayer. She forgot it entirely, or she murmured a sentence or two while she was running down-stairs in the morning or after she was in bed at night. It was mere form, and not true praying at all.
Mr. Wakefield had been sadly perplexed about Margaret. He felt sure, from what he saw and heard, that all was not well with her. She seemed to avoid him, and whenever he had an opportunity to speak with her she said as little as possible, and got away as soon as she could. What evil influence could be at work upon her? Not her step-mother’s. He felt sure that if Mrs. Moore but knew how, she would be glad to help the girl. One evening as he walked homeward he was thinking about Margaret, and wondering what he could do to help her. As he came near Mr. Andrews’ house somebody came out of their gate and ran down the street just in front of him. As she passed the lamp-post, and the light fell full upon her, he saw that it was Margaret. As she turned in at her own gate a book slipped from under her arm and fell to the ground, but she did not know it. She hurried up the steps and closed the door after her. Mr. Wakefield picked up the book, slipped it inside his coat, and went up to his own room; then he lighted the gas and sat down to see what sort of a book it was which would surely help or hinder this young Christian. He read enough to satisfy him that he had found the clue to Margaret’s difficulties. What soul could thrive on such mental food? “Satan is at the bottom of it!” he said, half-aloud, flinging the book from him. He sat a long time with his face between his hands, thinking.
The next evening, after tea, Mr. Wakefield lingered in the sitting-room and asked Margaret to try some of the pieces in the new Sabbath-school hymn-book. Margaret’s cabinet organ had been her mother’s, and was now a source of much pleasure to herself. She had learned to play sacred music nicely, so she and the minister often sang together. Johnnie sang a few minutes and then ran off. When they were left alone, Mr. Wakefield stepped into the hall and came back with the book he had picked up the night before.
“Margaret,” he said, “can you imagine to whom this belongs? I picked it up on the street last night.”
Now Margaret had been greatly troubled about the book all day; she knew Hester would be angry with her if it were lost, so it was with a sense of relief that she read the title, “Disinherited.”
“Oh! I’m so glad you found it,” she exclaimed, then stopped and blushed. She had a feeling that perhaps Mr. Wakefield would not quite approve of this sort of reading, and she had not meant to let him know that she ever read such books.
She felt very uncomfortable, and stood with her eyes on the carpet, waiting for him to lecture her severely, but he did nothing of the kind. When she looked up, his face and his tones were kind as he asked,—
“Do you love to read, Margaret?”
“Better than anything,” promptly answered Margaret.
“Do you like books of this sort—novels?” he continued.
She studied the pattern of the carpet a moment, and twisted one of her curls, then said, almost defiantly,—
“Yes, sir; I do.”
Mr. Wakefield forgot that he had meant to be very calm and gentle, and he said almost fiercely, as he walked back and forth,—
“O you poor child, I wish I could have saved you from this. Margaret, do you know what a horrible thing this novel-reading is; how the thirst for it is like the thirst for liquor? It drives out the love of Christ from the heart. It ruins souls! But there! I did not mean to frighten you,” he said, as the tears gathered in Margaret’s eyes. “Sit down and let us talk the matter over calmly. Let me tell you how near I came to being ruined by that trap of Satan’s myself.”
Just here the door-bell was heard, and Johnnie brought in Deacon Grey who had called to see the minister, while Margaret slipped out of the other door.
She flew, rather than ran, up-stairs. She tip-toed softly through the hall, for she did not wish any one to see her just then. As she went by a door which stood ajar, she heard her own name, and unconsciously paused. Her step-mother’s voice was saying:—
“We’ve got to make some different arrangements. Margaret gets worse every day. I’ve tried to be patient, but some days she acts like a little fury. Amelia says she sits up nights to read novels. I talked to her about it, and she just the same as told me it was not my affair. I thought it was all nonsense, her joining the church. What do such children know about it? I guess you had better send her to your aunt’s if she wants her. We can get along somehow.”
Then her father’s voice groaned out,—
“I’m sure I don’t know what is going to become of her.”
Margaret waited to hear no more. She turned to go into her own room, but Amelia was there; growing desperate, she went back into the dark hall and softly opening the door that led up garret, groped her way up the narrow stairs. She must be alone somewhere. It was a long, wide garret stretching over the whole house. This was the old homestead of the Moore family, and “take it up garret,” had been said of all the lame furniture and not-wanted articles for a whole generation. It was a cheerful place by daylight; a capital place for a romp; but to-night it looked “pokerish.” The tall chimneys reared themselves like grim giants at each end; old hats and coats hung from the rafters, and the moon, looking in at the gable window, made dancing shadows on the floor, of the long, bare branches of the elm-tree.
Margaret had never been up garret in the dark before. She would have been afraid if she had not been in such a tumult. She flung herself upon an old chest by the window, and cried out her mortification and anger in long, deep sobs. The moon beamed down in a kindly way, and the eye of God looked upon her in love and pity, but the poor child did not know it.
