Maggie Miller. Mary Jane Holmes
She does not say much now herself; but the sound of Maggie's voice, talking to her in the gathering twilight, is the sweetest she has ever heard; and so she sits and listens, while her hands work nervously together, and her whole body trembles with a longing, intense desire to clasp the young girl to her bosom and claim her as her own. But this she dare not do, for Madam Conway's training has had its effect, and in Maggie's bearing there is ever a degree of pride which forbids anything like undue familiarity. And it was this very pride which Hagar liked to see, whispering often to herself, "Warren blood and Conway airs—the two go well together."
Sometimes a word or a look would make her start, they reminded her so forcibly of the dead; and once she said involuntarily: "You are like your mother, Maggie. Exactly what she was at your age."
"My mother!" answered Maggie. "You never talked to me of her; tell me of her now. I did not suppose I was like her in anything."
"Yes, in everything," said old Hagar; "the same dark eyes and hair, the same bright red cheeks, the same—"
"Why, Hagar, what can you mean?" interrupted Maggie. "My mother had light blue eyes and fair brown hair, like Theo. Grandma says I am not like her at all, while old Hannah, the cook, when she feels ill-natured and wishes to tease me, says I am the very image of Hester Hamilton."
"And what if you are? What if you are?" eagerly rejoined old Hagar. "Would you feel badly to know you looked like Hester?" and the old woman bent anxiously forward to hear the answer: "Not for myself, perhaps, provided Hester was handsome, for I think a good deal of beauty, that's a fact; but it would annoy grandma terribly to have me look like a servant. She might fancy I was Hester's daughter, for she wonders every day where I get my low-bred ways, as she calls my liking to sing and laugh and be natural."
"And s'posin' Hester was your mother, would you care?" persisted
Hagar.
"Of course I should," answered Maggie, her large eyes opening wide at the strange question. "I wouldn't for the whole world be anybody but Maggie Miller, just who I am. To be sure, I get awfully out of patience with grandma and Mrs. Jeffrey for talking so much about birth and blood and family, and all that sort of nonsense, but after all I wouldn't for anything be poor and work as poor folks do."
"I'll never tell her, never," muttered Hagar; and Maggie continued: "What a queer habit you have of talking to yourself. Did you always do so?"
"Not always. It came upon me with the secret," Hagar answered inadvertently; and eagerly catching at the last word, which to her implied a world of romance and mystery, Maggie exclaimed: "The secret, Hagar, the secret! If there's anything I delight in it's a secret!" and, sliding down from the rude bench to the grass-plat at Hagar's feet, she continued: "Tell it to me, Hagar, that's a dear old woman. I'll never tell anybody as long as I live. I won't, upon my word," she continued, as she saw the look of horror resting on Hagar's face; "I'll help you keep it, and we'll have such grand times talking it over. Did it concern yourself?" and Maggie folded her arms upon the lap of the old woman, who answered in a voice so hoarse and unnatural that Maggie involuntarily shuddered, "Old Hagar would die inch by inch sooner than tell you, Maggie Miller, her secret."
"Was it, then, so dreadful?" asked Maggie half fearfully, and casting a stealthy glance at the dim woods, where the night shadows were falling, and whose winding path she must traverse alone on her homeward route. "Was it, then, so dreadful?"
"Yes, dreadful, dreadful; and yet, Maggie, I have sometimes wished you knew it. You would forgive me, perhaps. If you knew how I was tempted," said Hagar, and her voice was full of yearning tenderness, while her bony fingers parted lovingly the shining hair from off the white brow of the young girl, who pleaded again, "Tell it to me, Hagar."
There was a fierce struggle in Hagar's bosom, but the night wind, moving through the hemlock boughs, seemed to say, "Not yet—not yet"; and, remembering her vow, she answered: "Leave me, Maggie Miller, I cannot tell you the secret. You of all others. You would hate me for it, and that I could not bear. Leave me alone, or the sight of you, so beautiful, pleading for my secret, will kill me dead."
There was command in the tones of her voice, and rising to her feet Maggie walked away, with a dread feeling at her heart, a feeling which whispered vaguely to her of a deed of blood—for what save this could thus affect old Hagar? Her road home led near the little burying-ground, and impelled by something she could not resist she paused at her mother's grave. The moonlight was falling softly upon it; and, seating herself within the shadow of the monument, she sat a long time thinking, not of the dead, but of Hagar and the strange words she had uttered. Suddenly, from the opposite side of the graveyard, there came a sound as of someone walking; and, looking up, Maggie saw approaching her the bent figure of the old woman, who seemed unusually excited. Her first impulse was to fly, but knowing how improbable it was that Hagar should seek to do her harm, and thinking she might discover some clew to the mystery if she remained, she sat still, while, kneeling on Hester's grave, old Hagar wept bitterly, talking the while, but so incoherently that Maggie could distinguish nothing save the words, "You, Hester, have forgiven me."
"Can it be that she has killed her own child!" thought Maggie, and starting to her feet she stood face to face with Hagar, who screamed: "You here, Maggie Miller!—here with the others who know my secret! But you shan't wring it from me. You shall never know it, unless the dead rise up to tell you."
"Hagar Warren," said Margaret sternly, "is murder your secret? Did
Hester Hamilton die at her mother's hands?"
With a short gasping moan, Hagar staggered backward a pace or two, and then, standing far more erect than Margaret had ever seen her before, she answered: "No, Maggie Miller, no; murder is not my secret. These hands," and she tossed in the air her shriveled arms, "these hands are as free from blood as yours. And now go. Leave me alone with my dead, and see that you tell no tales. You like secrets, you say. Let what you have heard to-night be your secret. Go."
Maggie obeyed, and walked slowly homeward, feeling greatly relieved that her suspicion was false, and experiencing a degree of satisfaction in thinking that she too had a secret, which she would guard most carefully from her grandmother and Theo. "She would never tell them what she had seen and heard—never!"
Seated upon the piazza were Madam Conway and Theo, the former of whom chided her for staying so late at the cottage, while Theo asked what queer things the old witch-woman had said to-night.
With a very expressive look, which seemed to say, "I know, but I shan't tell," Maggie seated herself at her grandmother's feet, and asked how long Hagar had been crazy. "Did it come upon her when her daughter died?" she inquired; and Madam Conway answered: "Yes, about that time, or more particularly when the baby died. Then she began to act so strangely that I removed you from her care, for, from something she said, I fancied she meditated harm to you."
For a moment Maggie sat wrapped in thought—then clapping her hands together she exclaimed: "I have it; I know now what ails her! She felt so badly to see you happy with me that she tried to poison me. She said she was sorely tempted—and that's the secret which is killing her."
"Secret! What secret?" cried Theo; and, womanlike, forgetting her resolution not to tell, Maggie told what she had seen and heard, adding it as her firm belief that Hagar had made an attempt upon her life.
"I would advise you for the future to keep away from her, then," said
Madam Conway, to whom the suggestion seemed a very probable one.
But Maggie knew full well that whatever Hagar might once have thought to do, there was no danger to be apprehended from her now, and the next day found her as usual on her way to the cottage. Bounding into the room where the old woman sat at her knitting, she exclaimed: "I know what it is! I know your secret!"
There was a gathering mist before Hagar's eyes, and her face was deathly white, as she gasped: "You know the secret! How? Where? Have the dead come back to tell? Did anybody see me do it?"
"Why, no," answered Maggie, beginning to grow a little mystified. "The dead have nothing to do with it. You tried to poison me when I was a baby, and that's what makes