Evelyn Whitaker

“ Mr Robins had never been so kind and cheerful, quite amusing, laughing at her mistakes, and allowing her to play just the things she knew best, and to get up in the middle of the lesson to go to the window and see a long procession of gypsy vans going by to Smithurst fair.
It was such a very beautiful day; perhaps it was this that produced such a good effect on the organist's temper. There had been a frost that morning, but it was not enough to strip the trees, but only to turn the elms a richer gold, and the beeches a warmer red, and the oaks a ruddier brown ”

“ And all his plans for the future, his dreams of reparation, of tender reconciliation with Edith, and of happy, peaceful days that would obliterate the memory of past trouble and alienation, they had all vanished with the gypsy baby; life was as empty as the cradle by Mrs Gray's side. ”

“ His little Zoe! he could not possibly have been so utterly deceived all through; the baby who had lain on his bed, whose little face he had felt as he carried her up to the Grays' cottage in the dark, whom he had seen day after day, and never failed to notice the likeness, growing stronger with the child's growth. Was it all a delusion? all the foolish fancy of a fond, old man? ”

“ It nearly broke her father's heart; it made an old man of him and turned his hair white, and it seemed to freeze or petrify all his kindliness and human sympathy.
He was a proud, reserved man, and could not bear the pity that every one felt for him, or endure the well-meant but injudicious condolences, mixed with 'I told you so,' and 'I 've thought for a long time,' which the neighbours were so liberal with. Even Mr Clifford's attempts at consolation he could hardly bring himself to listen to courteously, and Jane Sands' tearful eyes and quivering voice irritated him beyond all endurance. ”

“ He had evidently given Jane credit for a great deal more unselfishness and devotion to him and his than she really felt, for she had all the time been busy working and providing for her own people, when he had thought she was full of consideration for Edith's child. Pshaw! he had to pull himself together and take himself to task. For even in these few days he had grown to think of that little brown-faced, dark-eyed baby as his grandchild, instead of Martin Blake's brat. ”

“ A baby was none the better or healthier for being dressed up in frills and lace; and Mrs Gray was a thoroughly clean motherly woman, and would do well by the child.
All the same, when Jane came back from Stokeley next day and unfolded the parcel she had brought from the draper's there, he could not help feeling that that somewhat dingy lavender, though it might wash like a rag, was, to say the least, uninteresting, and the texture of the flannel, even to his undiscriminating eye, was a trifle rough and coarse for baby limbs. ”

“ Gray, coming in dirty and tired in the evening, after a long day's work in the hayfield or carting manure, was never too tired, nor for the matter of that too dirty, to take the baby, and let it dab its fat hands on his face, or claw at his grizzled whiskers or slobber open-mouthed kisses on his cheeks. ”

“ For after all those clothes had actually gone to some other baby. Well! well! it is a selfish world after all, and each of us has his own interests which take him up and engross him. No doubt this little common child at Stokeley was all in all to Jane Sands, and she was glad enough of a chance to pick all the best out of those baby clothes up-stairs that he remembered his young wife preparing so lovingly for her baby and his. It gave him quite a pang to think of some little Sands or Jenkins adorned with these tucks he had seen run so carefully and frills sewn so daintily. ”

“ On her side, Edith was quite as obstinate and resentful. She had no idea of humbling herself and asking pardon. She thought she had quite a right to do as she liked, and she believed her father would be too unhappy without her to bear the separation long. She very soon found out the mistake she had made—indeed, even in the midst of her infatuation about Martin Blake, I think there lurked a certain distrust of him, and they had not been married many weeks—I might almost say days—before this distrust was more than realised. ”

“ Mr Robins often discovered her in tears, and she was constantly going out for hours at a time, having always hitherto been almost too much of a stay-at-home. He suspected that these lengthened absences meant visits to the Grays' cottage, and that baby-worship that women find so delightful; but he found out accidentally that she had never been near the cottage since the baby's arrival, and when he made an excuse of sending a book by her to Bill to get her to go there, she met the boy at the bottom of the lane, and did not go on to the cottage. ”

“ He came nearest it sometimes in those long evenings of organ playing, of the length of which poor little Jack Davis, the blower, so bitterly complained, when the long sad notes wailed and sobbed through the little church like the voice of a weary, sick soul making its complaint. But even so he could not tell it all to God, though he had been given that power of expression in music, which must make it easier to those so gifted to cry unto the Lord. ”

“ Perhaps anyone sharper and less simple than Mrs Gray might have grown suspicious of some other reason than pure, disinterested admiration for little Zoe, as the cause which brought the organist so often to her house; and perhaps, if the cottage had stood in the village street, it might have occasioned remarks among the neighbours; but he had always, of late years, been so reserved and solitary a man that no notice was taken of his comings and goings, and if his way took him frequently over the hillside and down the lane—why, it was a very nice walk, and there was nothing to be surprised at. ”

“ I knowed Zoe was gypsy born, for she'd one of them charms round her neck as I didn't meddle with, for they do say as there's a deal of power in them things, and that gypsies can't be drownded or ketch fevers and things as long as they keeps 'em.'
Mr Robins sat down in the chair opposite Mrs Gray; an odd, cold sort of apprehension was stealing over him, and the pleasant dream of home and Edith and Zoe, in which he had been living through the day, was fading away with every word the woman said. ”

“ An unprejudiced observer might have thought that Mrs Gray had some reason for her high opinion of Zoe, for she was certainly a very much prettier baby than the majority in Downside, who were generally of the dumpling type, with two currants for eyes. And she was also a very good baby—'And easy enough too for anyone to be good,' would be the comment of any listening Downside mother, 'when they always gets their own way!' which, however, is not so obvious a truth as regards babies under a year as it is of older people. ”

“ If he dropped asleep for a minute that night the child was in his arms again, heavy as lead, weighing him down, down, down, into some unfathomable gulf, or he was feeling for it in the dark, and its face was cold as death; and more than once he woke with a start, feeling certain that a child's cry had sounded close to his bed.
CHAPTER IV. Village Evidence—'Gray' on the Brain—Too Well He Knew—Mr Robins and the Baby—He Had Not Done Badly
here is certainly a penalty paid by people who keep entirely clear of gossip, though it is not by any means in proportion to the advantages they gain. ”

“ The clergyman had got successfully through his business with the roaring George Augustus and the whimpering Alberta Florence, and had now the little, quiet, brown-faced baby in his arms. Even a young and unmarried man was fain to confess that it was an unusually pretty little face that lay against his surplice, with a pointed chin, and more eyebrows and lashes than most young babies possess, and with dark eyes that looked up at him with a certain intelligence, recognisable even to an unprejudiced observer. ”

“ There was a sort of fascination about the child to the organist, and when he found that no one seemed to have the slightest suspicion as to who the baby really was, or why he should be interested in it, he gave way more and more to the inclination to go to the Grays' cottage, and watch the little thing, and trace the likeness that seemed every day to grow more and more strong to his dead wife and to her baby girl. ”

“ The younger boy, Bill, is six years younger and still at school, and having been a delicate child, or as his mother puts it, 'enjoying bad health,' is not promising for farm-work, and, being fond of his book and a favourite at school, his mother cherishes hopes of his becoming a school-teacher in days to come. ”

“ If this indifference were assumed, Jane Sands was a much better actor and a more deceptive character than he had believed possible; if she were too entirely absorbed in her own people to give even a thought to her young mistress's baby, she was not the Jane Sands he thought he had known for the last twenty years. The only alternative was that she knew nothing about the baby having been left on his door-step, nor of the meeting with his daughter in the churchyard which had preceded it. ”

“ The penalty is that when they particularly want to hear any piece of news, they are not likely to hear it naturally like other people, but must go out of their way to make inquiries and evince a curiosity which at once makes them remarkable.
Now every one in the village except Mr Robins heard of the baby found in the Grays' garden, and discussed how it came there, but it was only by overhearing a casual word here and there that the organist gathered even so much as that the Grays had resolved to keep the child, and were not going to send it to the workhouse. ”

“ And all the way to the gate Robins was talking much quicker and louder than was his usual custom, and he ended by almost pushing Millet out at the gate, all the time expressing great pleasure at having seen him, and pressing him to come in again any evening he could spare the time, and have a pipe and a bit of supper with him—such unheard-of hospitality that Millet went home quite persuaded that the old man was, as he expressed it to his wife, 'going off his chump;' so that it was quite a relief to meet him two days later at the choir practice as formal and distant in his manners as ever. ”

“ She never left Zoe out of the calculation, even when it became most difficult to adjust the number of mouths to be fed with the amount of food to be put into them, and over this dark future fell the darker shadow of the workhouse, which closes the vista of life to most of the poor. No wonder they live entirely in the present, and shut their eyes persistently to the future! ”

“ And then he went into the cottage, with a tap on the open door to announce his presence.
'Good evening, Mrs Gray,' he said in a subdued voice, so as not to wake the baby. But he might have spared himself this precaution, for the next glance showed him that the cradle was empty.
'Bless you, Mr Robins,' the woman said, 'you give me quite a start, coming in so quiet like. But, there! I 'm all of a tremble, the leastest thing do terrify me. You might knock me down with a feather. First one thing and then another! ”

“ As for the Grays, they seemed to be everywhere; that man hoeing in the turnip-field was Gray, that boy at the head of the team in the big yellow wagon was Tom, and Bill seemed to be all over the place, whistling along the road or running round the corner, or waiting to change his book at the organist's gate. If Mr Clifford spoke to Mr Robins it was about something to do with the Grays, and even Mr Wilson of Stokeley stopped him in the road to ask if some people called Gray lived at Downside. ”

“ My master he 've made a few inquirements; but there! for my part I don't care if we don't hear no more of her folks, and Gray's much of the same mind, having took a terrible fancy to the child. And it's plain as she ain't got no mother worth the name, as would leave her like that, and neglected too shameful. As there ain't no excuse, to my way of thinking, for a baby being dirty, let folks be as poor as they may.'
Somewhere deep down in Mr Robins's mind, unacknowledged to himself, there was a twinge of resentment at this reflection on the mother's treatment of the baby. ”

“ Mr Robins heard of the accident in the evening, and went up to the cottage, where he found Bill taking care of Zoe, who was having a fine time of it, having soon discovered that she had only to cry for anything that evening to get it, and that it was an occasion for displaying a will of her own in the matter of going to bed, and being preternaturally wide awake and inclined for a game, when on other nights she was quite content to be laid down in the wooden cradle, which was rapidly becoming too small for her increasing size. ”

“ On all other occasions he was a thoroughly sober man, perhaps, however, more from necessity than choice, as the beer supplied by Farmer Benson in the hayfield was of a quality on which, as the men said, you got 'no forrarder' if you drank a hogshead, and Gray had no money to spare from the necessaries of life to spend on luxury, even the luxury of getting drunk. ”

“ His feelings towards her, too, had been mere flattered vanity at being preferred by such a superior sort of girl than any deeper feeling, and vanity is not a sufficiently lasting foundation for married happiness, especially when the cold winds of poverty blow on the edifice, and when the superior sort of girl has not been brought up to anything useful, and cannot cook the dinner, or iron a shirt, or keep the house tidy. ”

“ Of her antecedents nothing was known, and, of course, any sensible people would have sent her to the workhouse—every one agreed on this point and told the Grays so; and yet, I think, half the women who were so positive and severe on Mrs Gray's folly would have done just the same.
We do not half of us know how kind-hearted we are till we are tried, or perhaps it is our foolishness that we do not realise. ”