CHAPTER X
IN the confusion and excitement which prevailed at the two houses in the South Hollow in which this narrative is concerned, Alice Lorraine’s secret perturbation either remained unnoticed or was attributed to the cause which affected them all. But very shortly Mrs. Lorraine, who had come out of her shell almost unbelievably in her week of companionship with Miss Penny, so that now in the crisis she was a very tower of strength not only to Miss Penny but to the Miller household as well, began to be greatly troubled by her daughter’s demeanour. She had rejoiced at the manner in which the girl had bloomed under Anna’s influence, and had been amazed not only at her capacity for learning and power of adaptability but at the generous warmth and sweetness of her nature. She had believed that a real transformation had taken place. 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 andhave 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.
On Saturday morning, when she caught sight of Alice, who supposed herself alone, wringing her hands as she stood by a window of the living-room looking north, Mrs. Lorraine sighed and said to herself, in Anna’s expressive phrase, that it seemed to be ‘up to’ her. And summoning all her powers, some of which had been awakened of late and others which had lain dormant almost all her life, Henrietta Lorraine started in good earnest to bring some sort of order out of chaos.
She began with Miss Penny. It did not take long to reconcile that philosophical and optimistic little lady to the loss of the yard of silken tresses; and after a bit Mrs. Lorraine convinced her that Anna would soon pick up again now that she was at home, would regain at least as many pounds as she seemed to have lost, and would lose the hurt, mournful look that close association with death in such sad circumstances had left in her merry eyes. Moreover, the care of the baby need not fall wholly upon her. There were plenty of people about to help.
“The fact is, Mrs. 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, Ihope 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.”
Mrs. Lorraine smiled. “We will stay as long as you are alone, Miss Penny,” she assured her. “There is nothing to call us back after all to that bare little cottage.”
“Then—O Mrs. Lorraine, why not spend the winter with me?” Miss Penny cried eagerly. “It would make me so happy. You could have a separate sitting-room, if you liked and—O, you would be here Christmas to see Reuben! And Anna ought to be at home while Rusty’s away, anyhow. It is so hard on her mother lending her to me. I feel troubled about it all the time—and yet, I cannot get on alone. And of course I would pay Alice just as I do Anna so that it needn’t make any difference and you can do your embroidery as well here as—O Mrs. Lorraine, we could get back my other cow and make butter! We both love to do it and I am sure you could make more money in that way and—O don’t say no! Dear me! I wish Mr. Langley would come in!”
“I won’t say no, and I will think it over. And we will stay on anyhow until Anna gets rested, and so we may as well get the cow back in the shed and begin making butter,” returned Mrs. Lorraine quietly though not without secret excitement.
At dinner, Alice could not eat and her mother was distressed. Afterwards she persuaded Miss Penny to lie down and then told Alice to go to her room to rest. Not long afterwards the girl appeared in the living-room in her prettiest suit with a jaunty little hat over her dark plaits. Mrs. Lorraine looked up in some surprise.
“You are going out, Alice?”
“Yes, mother, I want—I am going for a walk. I think—I will walk down to the cottage and bring back—some things.”
“But I can’t go with you and I don’t like your going into that empty house alone.”
“O it’s perfectly safe. They say it’s safe everywhere about Farleigh,” murmured Alice uneasily.
“Alice, you must not do it,” declared Mrs. Lorraine with new decision—for it was wise and kind andmotherly.
“Very well, I won’t go in,” said Alice in an odd voice.
Her mother looked at her. “You are restless, dear. You are more upset, now, over Anna’s escapade even than Miss Penny at her age. You feel as if you wanted to get away from everything for a little and I don’t blame you. But—we can’t do that any more, dear, you and I. That is what we have always done, though it isn’t your fault. And anyhow we have to make up now. Let me tell you what to do. Miss Penny says Anna feels obliged to go over to the parsonage this afternoon. Suppose you go over to theMillers’ and stay until she comes back? You can help take care of the baby. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I’ll go right over,” said Alice, and would have started but her mother arrested her.
“Hadn’t you better change your suit, Alice? To-morrow is Sunday, and if you get it creased there’d be no chance to press it to-night.”
Already Alice had expended considerable nervous energy on the subject of her dress. At one moment, she had felt as if she should don her poorest gown out of consideration for the shabbiness of the stranger. Again, that had seemed a shabby thing to do and she had decided to wear her most attractive things to accord, not with the stranger’s garb but with his manner and bearing. Then she would think of the dusty shop and waver. She might never have any more new clothes and perhaps it was foolish to risk spoiling a really handsome suit for the sake of making a good appearance before a stranger whom she didn’t know whether she liked and whom she would probably never see after to-day.
Then she said that she knew that she liked him. And besides, she had to have excitement after having had that beautiful, romantic image of Dick Cartwright so cruelly shattered before her eyes. She didn’t know how she should bear that if it wasn’t for looking forward to seeing John Converse. And shewouldsee him again after to-day. She would have to—for she meant to help him in his quest. And to-day she was to be as nice as she knew how to be and as interestedin helping him plan, and she would also look as well as it was in her power to look, so that altogether it would seem pleasant to him or not boresome to see her again.
She said now to her mother that she would be careful not to muss her skirt, and Mrs. Lorraine did not protest further. But she breathed a sigh of relief as she saw her at the Miller’s gate. She felt that Alice would be all right after an hour with the baby. For though he wasn’t a very attractive baby, he appealed to Mrs. Lorraine. He was quiet, he didn’t cry nor fuss, and he was a baby-creature.
But he wasn’t to have a chance that day. For not long after, the two girls left the house together. Alice had explained that her mother sent her over to help but that she had planned to go to the cottage to get the keys she had left there the day before. Anna declared that the baby was asleep and that there was nothing to do, and begged her to come along and tell her on the way of what had happened during her absence.
“I can’t get a sane, sensible word out of anyone. Braids of yellow hair and orphan babies are the only subjects people will mention to-day,” she added drolly and yet a bit plaintively. “And I’m fed up with the matter of yellow hair, and if I am going to talk about babies, it’s with people that appreciate their fine points better than anyone I have seen thus far.”
As they parted at the lane, Alice begged Anna not to say anything about her having come to the cottage.Anna assented without question and went on to the parsonage.
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. Suppose he had been—well, the sort of person her mother, for example, might guess him to be upon hearing the story? He wasn’t, but—something might have happened. He might be ill at the hotel at Marsden Bridge or—any number of things might have happened to prevent his coming. And he had the keys! Suppose her mother should want to get into the cottage to-morrow?
The girl rose and ran swiftly but quietly to the shop. Her heart was in her mouth as she knocked softly on the door, so softly that the sound wouldn’t have been heard from the porch she had just left. The door opened and the stranger held it wide for her.
Another stranger to-day! And it wasn’t only the dear light that made the difference. John Converse might have been another person from the man ofyesterday. He was dressed well,—almost elegantly. Certainly his suit, though it had a sack coat, was of fine material and good make and he wore a silk shirt and jaunty tie as if he were used to such informal elegance; and all the accessories were in keeping down to his neat shoes. He was not less thin nor pale—his face was almost cadaverous in the stronger light. But his eyes were merry and full of life, his rather large, thin-lipped mouth puckered with amusement at her wonderment, and there was a boyish eagerness about him that was flattering and very grateful to the girl’s perturbed spirit.
They shook hands gravely.
“It is more than good of you to come,” he said.
Alice Lorraine gave a little cry.
“Why, what have you done!” she exclaimed and looked about her as if frightened.
“Won’t you sit down and take in the magnificence at your ease?” he asked with a whimsical charm which seemed native to him. And Alice dropped into the large and comfortable wooden chair he indicated which was not only free from dust but had apparently been scrubbed clean.
Likewise the whole place. The room had been cleared of rubbish and transformed by the magic of strong, eager hands and soap and water to a quaintly attractive sitting-room. The bareness added to its apparent size. Odd bits of hand-made furniture were disposed gracefully about and every natural comeliness made the most of. Even the stairway added somethingto the general attractiveness. A bit of old rug lay before it and another at the door. The windows had a strip of dark cloth above for a blind and a white curtain over the lower sash. 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.”
He laughed. “It was soap and water and elbow grease that did this. I am afraid they wouldn’t presto-change me so easily.”
Then suddenly he paled. “Nevertheless, I have seen the time when soap and water might have worked wonders with me,” he declared bitterly. Alice looked at him in consternation.
“Pardon me. It was awfully good of you to come,” he said in another tone. “I hoped you would, and I believed you would unless you were prevented. And really——”
“You will stay right here now that you have made it so comfortable, won’t you?” Alice asked eagerly.
“O, I didn’t do it for that. I wanted to have a decent place for you to come to,” he said, boyishlyingenuous. Despite his gaunt face, which was also lined, and his grey hair, he was really youthful as he spoke.
“What a lot of work for a person you never saw but once,” she said. “I felt last night—when we saw Mr. Langley, you know—that we hadn’t settled anything—I mean, I thought I might help you—tell you about people or find out about those I don’t know—but——”
She paused. “I’m talking for all the world like Miss Penny,” she owned. “What I mean to say is that I am glad I did manage to arrange to see you to-day and that I was able to get away. And I am glad you have done this because it will make it comfortable for you. You can stay here as long as you choose—make it your headquarters.” And she went on to say that she and her mother were to remain at the Hollow for some time.
“You will stay, won’t you?” she begged.
“It would be perfectly bully if I could,” he cried eagerly. “I could—well, reconnoiter from here in grand style.”
But as he referred to his purpose in this region, the boyish look fled and he looked sad and perhaps old. And Alice remembered Enoch Arden and her heart ached for him.
But he was a boy again as he made the tea, served her, and sat down with his own cup. Alice, too, was a younger girl than she would have been if she had never known Anna Miller. They dallied happily overthe ceremony and afterwards went to the top of the stair so that Alice might see the change in the upper chamber, which was as wonderful as that below. The upper room, indeed, with its tent roof, beams, rafters and brick chimney, its window at either end and its built-in benches was more attractive than the lower. Alice rather hoped John Converse would suggest their sitting there, but he did not, and they returned to their chairs in the lower apartment to begin finally upon the real business of the afternoon.
“I don’t really know how to start out,” Alice remarked. “The people I know best are Miss Penny and the Miller family.”
“In my day there were no Millers in Farleigh—except the moth millers,—dusty-millers, we used to call them. I remember Miss Penny, however,—a little old maid who always came to church. She drove a fat pony. I suppose that is dead long ago?”
“I’m learning to drive him. I feed him sugar every day,” said Alice. “But I am wasting time. Suppose you ask me questions.”
“Well, suppose you tell me a bit more about that Cartwright fellow you mentioned yesterday.”
Alice paled. She didn’t want to think of Dick Cartwright now.
“I was all wrong,” she said in a low, pained voice. “He wasn’t good. He was—O, a dreadful man.”
“Why Miss Lorraine! what do you mean?” he asked. And she thought he had noticed her secret pain.
“I can’t tell you what he did. Mr. Langley told mein confidence and I really ought not to say anything,” she returned sadly. “Mr. Langley’s the only one who—well, he’s very anxious that this Richard Cartwright should be forgotten.”
“But I thought—didn’t you tell me yesterday that Mr. Langley was this man’s friend?”
“O yes. But this is on account of the son, Reuben. He’s a fine boy, everyone says, and he’s in college. Mr. Langley doesn’t want him to know how bad his father was. And he doesn’t want people to be thinking and talking of him for fear—well, he says it is best that he be forgotten.”
“I told you I knew Mr. 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.
“Not at all. One faces this way—a tiny breath of wind, and round goes the weather-cock!”
“I should think—” the girl began indignantly. Shedidn’t pause because she didn’t exactly know what it was she should think but because he was looking at her with a strange, half-hurt, half-angry look in his eyes.
“Even you, Miss Lorraine,—pardon me, but aren’t you really an example? Wasn’t it only yesterday that you were saying that it wasn’t fair that this man who had loved music and planned higher things than his weakness could fulfill should be utterly forgotten because he ran amuck when his head was turned by grief? And to-day—apparently you can’t think badly enough of him!”
The girl’s heart throbbed wildly. A flaming colour came to her cheeks giving her real beauty.
“Well, you yourself!” she cried hotly. “You—you said nasty things yesterday about Dick Cartwright and now, to-day, one would think he was your best——”
Suddenly she stopped. She was aware of a disturbance from without. Someone was calling her name and banging on the door of the cottage. Now she realised that it had been going on some time and she had been vaguely aware of it. She sprang to her feet, her face horror-stricken. Her mother had come for her!