Between the Dark and the Daylight

by Richard Marsh

I had not been in the house half an hour before I began to wish I hadn't come. Miss Riddle had not arrived, and if she was anything like the picture which my aunt painted of her, I hoped that she never would arrive--at least, while I was there. Neither of the Plasketts had seen her since she was the merest child. Mrs. Riddle never had approved of them. They were not Anti-Everythingite enough for her. Ever since the death of her husband she had practically ignored them. It was only when, after all these years, she found herself in a bit of a hole, that she seemed to have remembered their existence. It appeared that Miss Riddle was at some Anti-Everythingite college or other. The term was at an end. Her mother was in America, "Crusading" against one of her aversions. Some hitch had unexpectedly occurred as to where Miss Riddle was to spend her holidays. Mrs. Riddle had amazed the Plasketts by telegraphing to them from the States to ask if they could give her house-room. And that forgiving, tender-hearted uncle and aunt of mine had said they would.

I assure you, Dave, that when first I saw her you might have knocked me over with a feather. I had spent the night seeing her in nightmares--a lively time I had had of it. In the morning I went out for a stroll, so that the fresh air might have a chance of clearing my head at least of some of them. And when I came back there was a little thing sitting in the morning-room talking to aunt--I give you my word that she did not come within two inches of my shoulder. I do not want to go into raptures. I flatter myself I am beyond the age for that. But a sweeter-looking little thing I never saw! I was wondering who she might be, she seemed to be perfectly at home, when my aunt introduced us.

"Charlie, this is your cousin, May Riddle. May, this is your cousin, Charles Kempster."

She stood up--such a dot of a thing! She held out her hand--she found fours in gloves a trifle loose. She looked at me with her eyes all laughter--you never saw such eyes, never! Her smile, when she spoke, was so contagious, that I would have defied the surliest man alive to have maintained his surliness when he found himself in front of it.

"I am very glad to see you--cousin."

Her voice! And the way in which she said it! As I have written, you might have knocked me down with a feather.

I found myself in clover. And no man ever deserved good fortune better. It was a case of virtue rewarded. I had come to do my duty, expecting to find it bitter, and, lo, it was very sweet. How such a mother came to have such a child was a mystery to all of us. There was not a trace of humbug about her. So far from being an Anti-Everythingite, she went in for everything, strong. That hypocrite of an uncle of mine had arranged to revolutionise the habits of his house for her. There were to be family prayers morning and evening, and a sermon, and three-quarters of an hour's grace before meat, and all that kind of thing. I even suspected him of an intention of locking up the billiard-room, and the smoke-room, and all the books worth reading, and all the music that wasn't "sacred," and, in fact, of turning the place into a regular mausoleum. But he had not been in her company five minutes when bang went all ideas of that sort. Talk about locking the billiard-room against her! You should have seen the game she played. Though she was such a dot, you should have seen her use the jigger. And sing! She sang everything. When she had made our hearts go pit-a-pat, and brought the tears into our eyes, she would give us comic songs--the very latest. Where she got them from was more than we could understand; but she made us laugh till we cried--aunt and all. She was an Admirable Crichton--honestly. I never saw a girl play a better game of tennis. She could ride like an Amazon. And walk--when I think of the walks we had together through the woods, I doing my duty towards her to the best of my ability, it all seems to have been too good a time to have happened in anything but a dream.

Do not think she was a rowdy girl, one of these "up-to-daters," or fast. Quite the other way. She had read more books than I had--I am not hinting that that is saying much, but still she had. She loved books, too; and, you know, speaking quite frankly, I never was a bookish man. Talking about books, one day when we were out in the woods alone together--we nearly always were alone together!--I took it into my head to read to her. She listened for a page or two; then she interrupted me.

"Do you call that reading?" I looked at her surprised. She held out her hand. "Now, let me read to you. Give me the book."

I gave it to her. Dave, you never heard such reading. It was not only a question of elocution; it was not only a question of the music that was in her voice. She made the dry bones live. The words, as they proceeded from between her lips, became living things. I never read to her again. After that, she always read to me. Many an hour have I spent, lying at her side, with my head pillowed in the mosses, while she materialised for me "the very Jew, which Shakespeare drew." She read to me all sorts of things. I believe she could even have vivified a leading article.