Joslyn Gray

“ If he wasn’t her father, if he were some younger man—Anna wouldn’t admit it even to herself, but something kept trying to tell her that Alice acted now just as a girl would who was planning to run away—to elope. Still, that did not explain her interest in Reuben. Alice didn’t question any more, it is true, but she was all eagerness whenever Reuben was mentioned. But nothing could be more absurd, if one knew Reuben, than to connect him in any way with the man with whom Alice had been seen or with the occasion of her solitary rambles. ”

“ Langley?—had raised herself from the cushions of a padded arm chair and was staring at the intruder in mingled amazement and horror. And the girl, her heart in her mouth, stood as if transfixed and stared back. It was as if she had heard a tremendous explosion or witnessed a silent one (as one does in a dream) and found herself standing in the midst of a mass of wreckage—which might have been the shattered fragments of the bottle of cologne-water with which she had in fancy bathed the white brow of the pale, romantic invalid she had pictured. ”

“ Anna added. “And yet, Mrs. Langley, there’s worse than that. Now my friend that I am going back to the city to see lost her husband in the summer and now she’s sick herself, and there’s her baby. If she should—well, it must be no end harder for one to think of dying and leaving one’s baby alone in the world than to move away from somewhere and leave the grave of a baby whose soul is all safe.” ”

“ Langley sat almost erect. When it had happened, Anna did not know, but she noticed now for the first time that the hump was gone. “I don’t want you without him,” she cried, “and I want to know the truth. Why should he be afraid of me after I had done all that?”
“Because—O, if everything else was all right, he would be afraid of—your teeth!” the girl cried desperately. “They’re so—far apart—there’s a gap on each side. He hasn’t many, himself, but they’re close up and anyhow he doesn’t know what he looks like. When I hold him up to the mirror, what do you think he does. He looks right at me!” ”

“ CHAPTER VIII BEFORE the man on the old couch realized the actuality of the situation and sprang to his feet, his bewildered, incredulous eyes took in perforce the vision of a tall, graceful young girl with dark bands of hair wound about her small head and dark brows and eyes conspicuous in the dusk because of the pallor of her face. But pale as she was, and weak and faint and confused, Alice Lorraine’s fear took flight almost immediately. The first movement of the unknown man startled only to reassure her. ”

“ Thus far no one outside the parsonage had known of that audacious visit of Anna’s. Seth Miller’s face wore an expression half-jaunty, half proud. No man had such extraordinary daughters as he, and sometimes it seemed as if Anna were quite as remarkable as Rusty. But Mrs. Miller looked frightened.
Mr. Langley turned to her with his charming smile.
“What do you think, Mrs. Miller! This is the first time that Mrs. Langley has felt any interest whatever in anyone or anything since we lost our little Ella May,” he said in a sort of hushed wonderment. ”

“ Mrs. Langley—if it were, indeed, Mrs. Langley?—wore a gown of warm grey shading into lilac with a lace fichu fastened by a large, handsome cameo brooch. Her parted hair was brought back so loosely as considerably to disguise the sharpness of her temples. Her eyes looked softer and her skin less sallow even in the strong light; while, most remarkable of all, the appalling hollows in her cheeks had disappeared, taking with them almost all the grimness of the mouth. And when she actually smiled, partly with her eyes yet also with her lips, Anna lost her head. ”

“ Langley, I don’t think we’ll keep little Joe. We all love him—even ma, but we don’t really need him and—don’t you know someone who would like a baby boy that talks?”
Mrs. Langley stared at the girl. The blinds were raised to-day, though not so high, and she wore the pretty gown and becoming arrangement of her hair. She looked even more attractive than she had on Saturday, for she seemed used to the change. It was almost as if she had always let in the sunshine and the rich rosy afterglow which prevailed now and had never resembled Red-Riding-Hood’s wolf in her grandmother’s cap and gown. ”

“ Langley would be no cinch, the girl was nevertheless undaunted. It wasn’t natural for her to live in that way. If she weren’t lonely, she ought to be; if she were not wretched, it was because there were no extremes in her life—only one dead level of headache and neuralagy. And constantly Anna came back to the realisation that there was something to appeal to in a woman who had thought of having the three days old lamb carved and who had cherished the picture of it all these years. ”

“ As the kindly folk of the story rose compellingly before her, called forth by the wand of humourous sympathy of the yellow-haired fairy, and she saw not only Reuben Cartwright and the forlorn cat, but Miss Penny and Mr. Langley, the fat pony and the fat janitor who later was nearly to burn the grammar school building to the ground,—as she saw all this and more, the woman she had been for years was so moved that she felt almost like the woman she might and should have been. Alice got only the story Anna told. ”

“ Alice Lorraine stole softly up the lane. There was no one in sight and no sound. She was earlier than the hour she had named and she went round the house and sat down on the step of the kitchen porch. After a little she stole part way down the overgrown path to the shop and back again. The shop looked as empty as the house,—nay, emptier. The girl was convinced that there was no one there. And her heart grew cold at the thought that four o’clock might come and yet bring no one.
Suppose he shouldn’t come? John Converse had the key not only to the shop but to the house. ”

“ She had already had her tea, and when he entered the room, her husband felt rather than saw her eager questioning gaze.
“Anna still feels that she cannot get away without the baby, Ella dear,” he said gently, seating himself on the edge of a chair, like a poor relation in a fine drawing room. “And really, I see her difficulty. As a matter of fact, the girl has added one member—a complete stranger with no claim whatever—to a rather straitened household and she doesn’t wish her mother to feel the burden unduly. ”

“ One was always hearing of people who had been bed-ridden for years getting well, and Mrs. Langley wasn’t so bad as bed-ridden. ‘Neuralagy’ and sleeplessness and headache and the like were what ailed her, and youth saw no reason why these should not be speedily banished. Quite likely it might have been put through long since had anyone taken the matter in hand.
Anna grinned as she said to herself she would now be Charley on-the-spot. Mr. Langley had been goodness itself to Rusty and their father—to all the family, indeed. He was putting Rusty through college. ”

“ Mr. Langley, after a brief word to Mrs. Lorraine, followed. And despite his haste and excitement and perturbation, he noticed the homelike appearance of the place he recollected as a littered work shop.
But of the upper chamber he noted no detail. As his head rose above the railing of the stair, he saw the men start back from the further end of the place. Peering into the shadows, he saw the figure of a man stretched upon an old couch. Approaching, he saw that he was burning with fever and unconscious. ”

“ Then she tiptoed quietly towards the dark bench or couch beneath the rafters, peering before her all the while. Suddenly she paused.
Her horror-stricken eyes made out the outlines of a dark figure on the couch, an human being, a man who looked to her frightened gaze of giant size. His eyes were closed. He was asleep—or dead?
Alice Lorraine stood still trying to think. If the man were asleep, he was a drunken tramp and she must flee. If he were dead—O, so much more must she fly! Not for the world would she be alone with a dead man, a corpse. ”

“ Lorraine perceived that she had taken the wrong tack. She must try again.
“But Anna, having him keeps you from so many things. They really need you in the choir, you know.”
“Alice might sing in the choir. Her voice is better than mine and she knows heaps more about music.”
“Alice wouldn’t go in without you, and her voice really isn’t so sweet. And your mother needs you, Anna. Like most mothers, she has been tied at home for years, and it seems a pity that just as she begins to go about she should lose your companionship. ”

“ Wherefore she was the more disappointed to discover that, at a moment of crisis, Alice really wasn’t the useful, helpful, sympathetic, understanding girl she had seemed. Anna’s arrival, shorn of her wonderful hair and accompanied by the strange, unattractive, almost uncanny baby, had upset Miss Penny’s household and all but devastated the Millers’. And Alice, who might have cheered the former immensely and [108] have been of great service in restoring equanimity to the other, seemed completely unstrung by the excitement and a subject rather than a source of aid. ”

“ Langley and her room that makes you feel as if you were sitting on the edge of your chair waiting until you can get out where you see sunshine and people that talk and smile. Her eyes, you know, like coals of fire in the Bible, and great hollows in her cheeks and a voice that seems to come from a cave or a tomb. The blinds are drawn down almost to the window sills and there are medicine bottles to burn. There’s air enough, I suppose, but not the kind that’s sweetened by sunshine. ”

“ How would he ever get through the remainder of his life with his poor heart all flattened out and his vision forever shattered? But no one could bring the baby back nor could anyone halt or turn back the revolving years. Everything moved relentlessly on towards old age excepting that little marble lamb that would remain just three days old to the end of time.
But the marble lamb recalled Mrs. Langley, and suddenly Anna seemed to see a ray of light. Mrs. [16] Langley had been dead to the minister almost as long as the baby, and yet she wasn’t hopelessly dead. ”

“ Well, there was nothing to do now except to make some atonement for the cruel fate that had come upon Richard Cartwright. It wasn’t her fault, but it might have been, and the least she could do would be to make whatever amends might be possible now. Being the daughter of a convict, she would of course never marry, and she would devote her life to the memory of this genius who had died betimes. ”

“ Lorraine, Anna knows of people that will take the child,” Miss Penny owned. “That’s the queer part of it—she wanted a baby for these very people. Of course, she wouldn’t have had—but after this afternoon—it’s Saturday, you know—I can probably tell you all about it. And—O Mrs. Lorraine, I [109] hope you won’t feel that you must leave me right away. I have enjoyed having you here so much. And it is such a relief to have an older person to talk to now all this has happened. Dear me! it’s almost like having Reuben back—and I have only known you a week.” ”

“ At the end of the story, Anna rose hastily. “I must hike or Miss Penny will be limping round to get tea,” she said. “Poor dear! She doesn’t drive the fat pony herself now-a-days and can’t get out of the phaeton alone for she has rheumatism; but she is as crazy about kittens as I am and will be as pleased to hear that this mite has a home.”
Holding out her hand a bit timidly, the girl was surprised to have Mrs. Lorraine press it warmly.
“We are very grateful to you, Anna Miller, not only for the kitten but for other things, for changing the current of our thoughts,” she said. ”

“ Lorraine,” Anna said. “Really, I ought not to be at Miss Penny’s. With Rusty at college, I ought to be at home. Ma and pa need a daughter there the worst way. I get over all I can, but they’re so glad to see me and so sorry to have me go just across the street that it breaks my heart. But someone has to be with Miss Penny. She was goodness itself to Rusty and to the whole family, and I love her as if she were my favorite aunt of all and just love to be with her. And now there’s Mrs. Langley. She’s queer. ”

“ Alice tried to laugh, though she was still shaken. He lighted her down and out, took her key, locked the door and handed it back to her.
“You live in the house?” he asked.
Alice explained that she lived there with her mother but that they were visiting in the part of the village called South Hollow. She knew that she shouldn’t be saying this to a stranger whom she had found in the upper storey of the shop; but for herself she felt that there are strangers and strangers.
“I know the Hollow,” he said. “I lived about here as a boy. Are you going back now?” ”

“ Anna had a very sweet voice and had been asked to join the choir, and during the anthem, she fixed her long-lashed blue eyes seriously upon the women members, studying, not their voices nor their manner of using their vocal organs, but their attitude and demeanour. As she saw herself in fancy standing behind the low railing in her new green suit and ‘nifty’ hat, she wondered if it wouldn’t be an exceedingly pleasant change for the congregation to have a younger person to gaze upon and one who had more regard for the current fashions. ”

“ A small sheet-iron stove, still rusty, but clean, warmed the place and held a tiny kettle in which the water was boiling. A stand in the corner was covered by a white tea cloth, apparently just out of the shop, and held a tea pot and two cups, which were also new and gaudily pretty, and a plate of sweet biscuit.
“O Mr. Converse, you are a wizard surely!” cried the girl. “I really believe that you could turn yourself into whatever you wished. You could be an old gypsy woman or a fat man with bright-red hair and could walk the streets of Farleigh by day.” ”

“ Langley once. I should have thought of him as being faithful to the end of things,” he said bitterly.
“He was faithful to the end of things,” the girl rejoined warmly. “He——”
“Nonsense. There’s no such thing to-day as faithfulness,” he declared bitterly.
Afterwards, as she lay in her bed at night—Alice remembered Enoch Arden and wondered if he had learned of his wife’s unfaith and that had made him so bitter. At this moment, however, the girl was too wrought up to think of aught but the matter under discussion.
“There is, too. There is—ever so much!” she cried hotly. ”

“ Would he come to the likes of me, Miss Anna?”
“Sure, Bell,” said Anna, though Mrs. Langley frowned upon the bold request. But Big Bell held out her great strong arms, and, the baby responding with unusual readiness, gathered him tenderly into them. Mrs. Langley, who yielded him ungraciously, watched Bell suspiciously as she marched about the room with him, showing him the colleen on the parlour clock and the wee people on the silver water-pitcher. ”