The Shield of Silence | Page 8

grave threatened. The evil crew of The Ship was but biding its time to strike, and Mary thrilled and feared at once.
The bread, as Mary sniffed, was ready to be taken from the oven. The first loaf was poised nicely on the girl's towel-covered hand when a dark, bent old woman drifted, rather than walked, into the sunny kitchen. She came noiselessly like a shadow; she was dirty and in rags; she looked, all but her eyes, as if she might be a hundred years old, but her eyes held so much fire and undying youth that they were terrible set in the crinkled, rust-coloured face.
"I want her!" The words, spoken close to her shoulder caused Mary to drop the loaf and turn in affright.
"I want--her!"
"Gawd! Aunt Becky!" gasped Mary, dropping, like a cloak, the thin veneer of all that Ridge House had done for her. "Gawd! Aunt Becky, I done thought you was--dead and all. I ain't seen you in ages. Won't you set?"
The woman stretched a claw-like hand forth and laid it on the shoulder of the girl.
"Don't you argify with me--Mary Allan. I want her."
There seemed to be no doubt in Mary's mind as to whom Aunt Becky wanted.
"Sister Angela is at prayer, Aunt Becky," she whispered, trying to escape from the clutch upon her shoulder.
"Mary Allan--go tell her I want her. Go!" There was that in Becky's tone that commanded obedience. Mary started to the hall, her feet clattering as she ran toward the chapel on the floor above.
Becky followed, more slowly. She got as far as the opened door of the living room, then she paused, glanced about, and went in.
There are some rooms that repel; others that seem to rush forward with warm welcome. The living room at Ridge House was one that made a stranger feel as if he had long been expected and desired. It was not unfamiliar to the old woman who now entered it. Through the windows she had often held silent and unsuspected vigil. It was her way to know the trails over which she might be called to travel and since that day, three years before, when Sister Angela had met her on the road and made her startling proposition, Becky had subconsciously known that, in due time, she would be compelled to accept what then she had so angrily refused.
On that first encounter Sister Angela had said:
"They tell me that you have a little granddaughter--a very pretty child."
"Yo' mean Zalie?" Becky was on her guard.
"I did not know her name. How old is she?"
"Nigh onter fifteen." The strange eyes were holding Sister Angela's calm gaze--the old woman was awaiting the time to spring.
"It is wrong to keep a young girl on that lonely peak away from everyone, as I am told that you do. Won't you let her come to Ridge House? We will teach her--fit her for some useful work."
Sister Angela at that time did not know her neighbours as well as she later learned to know them. Becky came nearer, and her thin lips curled back from her toothless jaws.
"You-all keep yo' hands off Zalie an' me! I kin larn my gal all she needs to know. All other larnin' would harm her, and no Popish folk ain't going to tech what's mine."
So that was what kept them apart!
Sister Angela drew back. For a moment she did not understand; then she smiled and bent nearer.
"You think us Catholics? We are not; but if we were it would be just the same. We are friendly women who really want to be neighbourly and helpful."
"You all tote a cross!" Becky was interested.
"Yes. We bear the cross--it is a symbol of what we try to do--you need not be afraid of us, and if there is ever a time when you need us--come to Ridge House."
After that Becky had apparently disappeared, but often and often when the night was stormy, or dark, she had walked stealthily down the trail and taken her place by the windows of Ridge House. She knew the sunny, orderly kitchen in which such strange food was prepared; she knew the long, narrow dining room with its quaint carvings and painted words on walls and fireplace; she knew the tiny room where the Sisters knelt and sang. One or two of the tunes ran in Becky's brain like haunting undercurrents; but best of all, Becky knew the living room upon whose generous hearth the fire burned from early autumn until the bloom of dogwood, azalea, and laurel filled the space from which the ashes were reluctantly swept. Every rug and chair and couch was familiar to the burning eyes. The rows of bookshelves, the long, narrow table and--The Picture on the Wall!
To that picture Becky went now. She had never been able to see