CHAPTER IX
ON the afternoon following Alice Lorraine’s strange adventure, Mr. Langley sat at his study window gazing out over the pickets of the paling towards the bushes and scrub trees which marked the line of the river, but which, being mainly oaks, still hid the stream itself from view. He was ready for Sunday even to the point of having tidied his desk so that it looked unfamiliar. He was conscious—vaguely conscious—of working better and more easily of late—with more spirit. It might be that it was only a sort of rebound after the period of depression into which he had fallen when someone had reminded him of the fact that Ella May, whom he had always thought of as a little girl, would now have been a woman grown, older than her mother had been at her birth, and he had lost the child-companion of his thoughts and wanderings. Even so, something must have happened from without himself to pull him out of that slough. That something was, of course, connected with his wife’s new interest in life—at least in so much of life as was represented by the other Miller girl.
It was probably recollection of Anna that made him think at first glance that the figure coming along theavenue at a distance beyond the lane was Anna, but, looking again, he saw that it was someone else—one of the grammar school children, he fancied, though he couldn’t seem to place her. He didn’t try long, for as his eyes dwelt upon that particular spot, something disconcerting came suddenly to him. Last evening as he had walked slowly homewards just before full darkness, he had looked up at this point to see approaching him the figures of a man and woman or youth and maiden whom one glance showed to be intensely interested in one another or in a common subject and who seemed to be strangers to him. Then he had utterly forgotten them. For he had been arrested by a loud chattering in a tree at the roadside and had gone to see why a squirrel should be awake at that time of day. Then, walking on, he had met Alice Lorraine. She was alone, but—the minister shook his head. It seemed now to him that the figure of the girl he had seen walking with the strange man was Alice Lorraine.
And yet—it couldn’t be. The man and woman weren’t figments of his imagination, he was sure of that. They must, however, have turned back at that point for some reason. And quite likely he had stood looking for and calling to the squirrel longer than he had realised and Alice had come along meantime.
The click of his gate recalled his thoughts sharply. On a sudden the man sat erect and stared—almost glared at the strange yet familiar figure he saw coming slowly up the flagged walk. For an instant he could not believe it—could not credit the evidence of hiseyes. Then he recollected the preceding Saturday and—O, that sermon of Sunday! And he groaned within his heart. Had that child been so affected as to sacrifice her vanity thus? It was worse than absurd. It was cruel, monstrous!
He went to the door to let her in.
“Anna, take off your hat,” he bade her, his voice stern through repressed feeling.
Obeying silently, Anna Miller stood before him with downcast eyes. She looked like a boy,—a handsome lad of perhaps a dozen years. Her long yellow hair had been shorn. Parted at one side, the thick, short unruly locks curled about her peaked face and pipe-stem neck, emphasizing the childish delicacy of her features, the long curling eyelashes and the sweet curve of her mouth. Later Mr. Langley realised this, and the fact that though Anna looked younger, she had somehow quite lost whatever it was in expression or countenance that likened her to a doll. He, who had never acknowledged that likeness while it existed, became aware of it after it had been displaced by something else. But at the moment the loss seemed irreparable and entire; the hard ugly fact seemed quite without extenuation.
With an effort the girl raised her eyes and smiled.
“I wonder if Mrs. Langley wants to see me?” she asked.
“She always wants to see you, Anna,” he returned half absently, frowning unconsciously. But as she made a move to go in, he arrested her.
“Why have you done this foolish thing, tell me, child!” he demanded reproachfully.
“Because—well—” Anna choked—“Honestly, Mr. Langley, Ican’ttell you now,” she faltered. “Ma cried and Miss Penny and even Mrs. Lorraine, and Pa took to the wood-pile. It’s only—a sort of a joke.”
“A poor sort of joke, it seems to me,” he remarked and betook himself to his study.
Mrs. Langley cried, too. But whereas one would have deprecated Anna’s mother’s tears and Miss Penny’s, it was probably good for Mrs. Langley to forget herself for the moment and be really moved by something beyond her immediate narrow horizon. It was, perhaps, fortunate for her that after all those arid, selfish years she had tears of sympathy to weep.
Anna found her looking better. Since the girl had begun to visit her, Mrs. Langley had slept at night and suffered less and less pain during the day. This afternoon she wore an old-fashioned lace fichu over her ugly Mother Hubbard gown which so relieved the sharpness of her face and the yellow tone of her skin, that Anna had no hesitation in kissing her when she saw that it was expected of her.
But as she stood before her, suddenly Mrs. Langley raised both hands and cried out.
“Anna Miller! Your lovely hair!” she exclaimed incredulously, “you’ve had it all cut off!” And covering her face with her hands she began to weep.
Anna, who had had a hard week and a difficult home-coming, was startled and distressed. She stoodquite still with tightly clasped hands. It might kill an invalid to cry like that. If they knew, they would never let her in again. What if Big Bell should come in now—or Mr. Langley? How angry he would be! Anna hadn’t supposed he had it in him until she had heard his voice to-day. He was probably thinking then that it would be a shock to his wife, and that she was a hateful thing not to have thought of it.
Poor Mrs. Langley! Her shoulders were shaking. Anna went closer and put her arm about her gently.
“Don’t cry. Don’t feel badly about me, Mrs. Langley,” she begged softly. “It’ll grow out again. I’m awfully sorry, but honest and true, I couldn’t help it.”
Mrs. Langley uncovered her face.
“Couldn’t help it?” she repeated wonderingly, adding with more spirit than she had ever exhibited before since Anna had known her. “Do you mean that someone cut it off by force and stole it? O, Anna, if they did that, I’ll have Mr. Langley put them in prison right away!”
Anna couldn’t help laughing. But she said to herself it wasn’t bad for Mrs. Langley to believe her husband was Charley-on-the-spot, whether he really was or not.
“Well, no’m, not just that,” she said, “but——”
“But what?” demanded the invalid rather sharply.
“I haven’t told anyone yet,” replied Anna softly. “I just let them think that I—just did it, you know, and that I like it better. I thought they wouldn’t mindso much as if they really knew. But I’ll tell you if you want me to.”
Mrs. Langley gazed at the girl wonderingly. Anna was pale and there were bluish shadows under her eyes which looked very big and rather wistful to-day. Already Mrs. Langley began to feel that if she could but forget that shimmering mass of gold about her shoulders of a week since, she might like her even better as she was now. The short locks curled so gracefully and stood out so picturesquely about her little face and slender throat that her head was like a bright, loose-petalled flower upon its stem.
“Do tell me about it, Anna, if you’re not too tired,” she said wistfully, endeavoring rather vainly to soften her harsh voice. “No, don’t sit there, poor child. You shall have this soft rocking chair for your sharp little bones.” And before Anna realised what she was doing, she had risen and forced the girl into her own padded rocker.
Of course Anna would not keep it, but she drew another close. She rather shrank from making the explanation; but she said to herself sagely that it might do Mrs. Langley good to hear it, and it might forward a certain scheme she had in mind—a wonderful plan that was to crown all her endeavors and make everyone happy. Apparently it hadn’t hurt her to cry, for she had hopped out of that rocking chair and whisked her into it as nimbly and neatly as any strong person could have done.She should worry!
“Well, Mrs. Langley, you see I found my friendBessy very bad off,” she began. “It was all very sad because Joe her husband wasn’t long dead, and there was the baby, little Joe, Junior, and her chum Hazel sticking by her through everything and supposing she had lost her job, though they took her back again. I slept with Hazel Monday night and woke up towards morning and found her crying. It seemed that Bessy had enough laid up to bury her; but she’d been sick so long that Hazel had just had to break into it, what with medicine and the baby’s milk, and of course she had to have something to eat herself or she couldn’t have done for Bessy. And here it was almost gone, and Bessy didn’t know it had been touched, and was feeling so secure about it. You might not think anyone would mind, Mrs. Langley, but there’s something frightful in the idea of being buried by charity.”
“I suppose so,” Mrs. Langley assented absently.
“Charity down there doesn’t mean what it does with us, you see,—public charity isn’t like the charity of the Bible, you know.”
Mrs. Langley nodded impatiently.
“Well, I managed to get Hazel chirked up so that she went to sleep, and I lay staring at the smoky ceiling and wondering what to do. Then suddenly I had a hunch. And the very first thing in the morning I went down to Mason and Martin’s and talked with a woman in the hair goods I used to know that had first put me wise about such things. She gave me a tip and the people she sent me to offered me sixty-five dollars for my hair—the braid was almost a yard long andabout as thick at one end as at the other, you know. Then I went back and told Hazel I could get sixty-five dollars for her at any moment. She thought it was a diamond ring or family jewels I could put in soak, which wouldn’t of course mean much at a time like that, and she cheered right up. And Bessy seemed to feel a change and to be really better, and we all talked about old times in the store and laughed a lot. But that was Bessy’s last day. She died in the night. In the morning I went down—and got the money.”
Unconsciously the girl drew a deep sigh even as she forced a little plaintive smile. Mrs. Langley sighed yet more deeply. She wasn’t sufficiently practical to ask any of the obvious questions or to suggest the alternatives with which others were to confront and confound the girl even though they were quite futile now that the deed was done.
“It was good of you, Anna,—it was a beautiful thing to do,” she acknowledged, “only I am afraid you will be sorry.”
“I should worry. It will be good for me, and a lot less strain on the looking glasses,” the girl owned, shrugging her shoulders. “And anyhow, Mrs. Langley, I never could be sorry, after seeing real things like I saw there: Bessy only barely two years older than I and Hazel just my age, and—O, I’m so thankful it was so long and not thin and that I had sense to think of it in time. Honest and true, I don’t believe I could ever be happy again or sleep nights if we had had tocall in—outsiders. But you never could understand that without being right there.”
Mrs. Langley sighed again.
“Of course I shall sort of miss it,” Anna rattled on. “I used to brush it at night, have it all over me, you know, and Rusty would tease me. And I simply loved the feel of that fat braid flopping about. But it’s just as well, for I sha’n’t have so much time now.”
“You look—O, Anna, at this moment you look just as my baby would have looked when she began to run about!” cried Mrs. Langley almost enthusiastically. “But please don’t put on your hat now. You have only just come.”
“I really must. Ma thought I ought not to come at all, but I felt as if I must get it over—about my hair, you know.”
“Then you’re staying at home,” remarked Mrs. Langley with her occasional acuteness as to the present moment. “When do you go back to Miss Penny?”
The girl hesitated. “Not for some little time, Mrs. Langley.”
It would have seemed that Mrs. Langleymusthave asked the desired question. But the invalid was thinking of herself.
“O Anna, how very nice! You won’t be nearly so busy, then, and can get over here oftener. I wish you would come regularly in the middle of the week, too. Can you?” she asked promptly.
Anna sighed. “The fact is, I’m going to be a heap busier—that’s why I’m staying at home,” she returnedobscurely. “But Mrs. Langley, some of the ladies would just love to drop in to see you.”
“Anna Miller, I don’t know what you are thinking of,” Mrs. Langley complained feebly, falling back in her chair. “I have been an invalid since my baby died. I couldn’t endure seeing anyone.”
“You see me.”
“That’s very different. Besides, you took an interest in my baby’s grace. No one else did that. Even the baby’s father——”
“O Mrs. Langley,” Anna interrupted quickly, “Mr. Langley doesn’t—he’s a real true-blue Christian, you know. He doesn’t think of Ella May as dead, and so——”
“Never mind that. But I wish that if you aren’t going back to Miss Penny’s you’d come right here and stay all the time.”
Anna could scarcely restrain a groan. “I’m needed at home,” she said briefly and drew her jacket together. But after all, the real business of her call hadn’t been touched upon.
“You knew that there was a baby, too—little Joe, Junior?” she asked.
Mrs. Langley assented without interest.
“He was left pretty much alone, poor little lamb, wasn’t he?”
“I suppose the girl Hazel would look after him?”
Anna’s eyes flashed. “She makes seven dollars and a half a week—that’s every penny she has to live on. Even if she could work with him on her hands, shecouldn’t buy his milk with what was left each week.”
“O, I see. I suppose she will put him in an orphan asylum?”
“Orphan asylum nothing!” cried Anna and waited a minute. Then as Mrs. Langley did not speak she said casually: “I brought him home with me.”
Mrs. Langley sat up straight. “Anna Miller!” she exclaimed.
“There was nothing else to do and anyhow I wanted to. The little beggar needs fresh air and sunshine and—Farleigh.”
“You don’t mean that you’re going to keep him?” Mrs. Langley protested.
Anna’s heart sank. She had truly decided to bring the baby home because there had seemed no alternative. But no sooner was she out of the sadness and confusion and settled in the train than she had realised the fitness, the inevitability of her action. She was bringing the baby straight to Mrs. Langley. A baby was exactly what Mrs. Langley needed and wanted and what Mr. Langley would enjoy most of anything. If she had chosen, she would probably have had a girl, but she wasn’t sure that that wouldn’t have been a mistake. And though Anna, who was wild over all young creatures, was attached to little Joe already, she decided to hand him over to Mrs. Langley as soon as the transfer could be affected. But even before she had come to the parsonage to-day, she had realised that it wasn’t altogether the simple matter it would seem to be and that it wasn’t to be accomplished withoutfinesse. Still she had expected one visit to finish the negotiations,—and she had nearly missed mentioning it at all!
“I hardly know,” she faltered. “That is, I’m going to keep him of course until I find a good home for him. I’d like to keep him always only—ma wasn’t so tremendously pleased to have him added to her family, and of course I wouldn’t have dreamed of taking him to Miss Penny’s though she would have taken him in forever if I had said the word. However, I own that it was something of a surprise to ma—springing the baby on her at the same time she saw my Sampson-Delilah hair-cut. But heaps of people would give their heads to get a nice baby ready-made just at the cunning age, or nearly, and with the worst of his teething over.”
She waited anxiously. Mrs. Langley only stared at her.
“People that haven’t any children or people that have lost children,—lost them when they were babies, ought to jump at such a chance,” she went on, longing to have Mrs. Langley ask some question, however reluctantly, concerning the child. But the invalid held up a protesting hand.
“Anna! I would never have believed that you would speak in that unfeeling way about—the loss of a baby!” she cried.
“I didn’t mean to,” said Anna quickly. “I just wanted—perhaps Mr. Langley might know of some good home where they would take in the little fellow.Would you mind telling him about little Joe and asking him?”
“Mind! Of course I would mind, Anna Miller! I—I never could get through it!”
“Then I suppose I shall have to see him myself,” remarked Anna tentatively.
“Anna, Mr. Langley is an overworked man,” said his wife rather surprisingly. “He has a great deal to do as chairman of the school committee, besides all his church business. Don’t go to him with any such thing as that. And—O Anna, don’t say anything more about it to me. Don’t mention the matter at all when you come next Saturday—or Wednesday, if you can come on Wednesday. I’m all upset.”