CHAPTER XIII
AS Mr. Langley walked slowly back to Farleigh in the early dusk of the cloudy November day, he reflected upon his visit, upon the beautiful baby, upon what had carried him thither and upon Anna’s unaccountable unwillingness to gratify his wife’s not unnatural desire. But he said to himself it wasn’t really unaccountable—it only seemed so to him. How serious the girl had looked as she stood with the baby in her arms, its little face hidden on her shoulder—and how staunch and true! And when all was said, she had simply refused to neglect her duty as she saw it. Quite likely, too, she saw more clearly than he. Certainly there was nothing selfish in her standpoint, while he, for his part, could not so absolve himself. He hoped he had not urged her unduly.
Nevertheless, the situation was not normal. Anna’s mother was rightly troubled. The girl was too young to shoulder the responsibility she had taken upon herself. After the strain of those hard years in the city, she ought to be free to devote herself to school and a school-girl’s pleasures with only the normal home duties of such an one. Someone ought to adopt the baby—someone in Farleigh so that Anna need not be separated wholly from him. Someone—Mr. Langleystopped and put forth considerable effort to dislodge a stone between the flags with his walking stick. As he went on again, he said to himself that it would be a simple matter to put through. If they knew there was a chance, it seemed to him that people would simply flock to the Millers’ in crowds to beg for that most engaging baby. How wise the little fellow had looked as he listened to the watch!
Sighing vague, he hastened on as if he wished to escape something. But with all his speed, he was unable to do so, and depression settled upon him. He supposed that it was because he was drawing near the parsonage and would have to disappoint his wife.
He went directly to her room, realising, even in his preoccupation, that he owed the privilege to Anna. For only since she had entered the wedge, had he fallen into the habit of seeking his wife at odd moments. And though she rather tolerated than welcomed his visits, he was grateful for even tolerance. For her long illness and silence and desire for seclusion had estranged husband and wife almost as effectually as bitter feeling might have done.
Mrs. Langley sat in her cushioned chair in the dark, gloomy room, awaiting the word he was to bring. Her eyes were weak from headache and want of sunshine and out-of-door air, and in winter she had her tea very early to avoid lighting the heavily shaded lamp. Both Mr. Langley and Bell Adams felt that, having admitted Anna Miller, if Mrs. Langley would also let in the sunshine she might utterly banish neuralgia.But neither ventured to make the suggestion. 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. And certainly Mrs. Miller had a difficult time when her children were small and——”
His wife broke in almost fiercely.
“Russell Langley! I tell you that I cannot get along without seeing Anna at least every Saturday,” she cried.
He sighed as he pushed back a bit further on the chair, though not enough to be comfortable.
“Well, Ella, why not let her bring him along—why not try it just for once?” he asked quietly. “He’s really a beautiful child. (The minister was quite sincere.) He sat on my lap all the while I was there, quiet as a mouse, and the first I knew the little fellow was feeling for my watch. I only wish you could have seen his face, dear, as I held it to his ear. Do let Anna bring him on Saturday!”
“I couldn’t bear the shock of it,” she said dully asif repeating a formula, then suddenly enquired: “Russell, where’s my watch?”
“In the top drawer of my desk. I wind it every night. Would you like it, Ella?”
She assented rather sharply and he fetched it. Now he seated himself comfortably and taking the key from his chain, wound the watch and set it exactly by his own and put it on the stand with the medicine bottles and the photograph of the lamb.
“She’s a stubborn girl, that Anna Miller,” his wife remarked.
“She means well,” he returned absently in conventional phrase, his mind being otherwise engaged as he presently showed.
“I have it!” he exclaimed suddenly, holding his watch from him as if he had discovered the clue to the mystery in it. “Anna can bring the baby with her, but you needn’t see him—you needn’t realise that he’s in the house at all; and you wouldn’t, he’s such a mouse. And I’ll mind him while Anna visits you. He knows me—I think he rather takes to me, you know, and I can carry him all over the house and show him everything. I fancy the little chap might rather like the statuette on the parlour clock and—O, the elves on the silver water-pitcher! And there’s my crystal paper weight. And perhaps when I’m over in Wenham I will just step into Wetherell’s and see what they have in the way of toys. Boys generally——”
But Mrs. Langley made a sudden move.
“Russell Langley!” she cried. “If that baby comesto this house, he shall come straight to my room. He can have my watch to play with. He can’t hurt it, and if he bites the case, I don’t care.”
Seth Miller was one of the folk who adored Mr. Langley and he was aware of the disappointed look upon his face as he left the house that Sunday afternoon. He had unbounded confidence in his daughter; if she caused the disappointment, it was because she couldn’t help it. But he felt as if he should like to do something particularly nice for the minister to make up for it.
As he pondered upon it, it came to him that he might be able to do some bit of carpentry at the church as a surprise to Mr. Langley. But he couldn’t think of anything that was necessary, and to discover any possibility in the way of ornamentation he would have to go over to the church. He had gone over early that morning to see to the fire, had attended service, waiting until everyone was out after Sunday school to lock the building, and he would have to go over early to unlock the building and see that all was right for evening service. He might have postponed this matter until that time, but it seemed to make it of more consequence if he made a special journey, so he decided to go at once.
He was tired enough, however, not to wish to go upstairs for his keys. He had an extra key to the little side door leading to the vestry which he kept in the kitchen so that Anna could get it when he was away. She had sung in the choir before the baby’sarrival and had let the others in and out for rehearsals. But when he looked, the key was not in its place.
Mrs. Miller and the boys had gone home with Miss Penny and Anna was in her room, so he fetched his bunch of keys and went on, wondering that Anna, who was exceedingly careful of such things, should have failed to return the key to the nail where it belonged. As he approached the church from the rear he was suddenly startled by a sound which was, however, not startling in itself—a low, sweet strain of music which seemed to come from the church and to be the voice of the well-known organ.
Seth Miller’s heart beat violently. The organist came from Wenham and did not play for evening service. Moreover, she played at Wenham in the afternoon—she was in the church there at this very moment. No one else but Mr. Langley had a key and he did not play the big organ. And—how early the sun set. It was almost dark now. Miller did not believe in ghosts, but—it would be dark inside.
The music ceased. As it died away, it came to him that Anna might be in the church. Perhaps the baby had fallen asleep and she had run down for a little change. He didn’t know that she could play the pipe organ, but she was full of music like her mother. Moreover, he wasn’t sure as the music he had heard had been correct music. He had something of an ear himself, but the strain was low and he had been excited, and for all he knew, it might have been the chromatic scale. Of course it was Anna, and hehurried round to the door of which she had the key.
But it was fast. He had told Anna not to lock the door behind her at choir rehearsal, but perhaps she felt that this was different. He unlocked it and went in making a racket and calling her name lest she be frightened.
She was not to be found, however. The audience room looked exactly as it had when he had left it early in the afternoon except that now twilight had fallen upon it. He went to the organ loft, but saw no traces of anyone having been there. And he began to wonder if he had been mistaken. Perhaps he hadn’t heard anything. But he knew he had. Perhaps it had come from elsewhere? It had sounded like the organ, but it was rather low and soft for that great organ. Still, where could it have come from? Shaking his head, Seth Miller returned home, his errand forgotten.
That evening as he was about to start for the church, he asked Anna what she had done with the key to the vestry door.
“It’s there on the nail, Pa,” she said, pointing to the place where it should have been—and where it was!
Too confounded for speech, he took it down, handled and put it back. Then he went out without a word.
He decided to say nothing to Anna until next day. But the next day brought wild excitement to the house in the form of an invitation for Anna to bring little Joe to the parsonage on Saturday, and he forgot the lesser in the greater.
The excitement was great, too, at Miss Penny’s, and Joe, Junior, acquired a new importance. Anna consulted Mrs. Lorraine and Miss Penny, and even Mrs. Miller showed an interest in the baby’s toilette for the occasion. But no one guessed how painfully the girl made her preparations, for she expected to return without the child. She sang as she flew about, and laughed at the boys who were working hard in all their spare time to teach the baby to talk before he should visit the parsonage. Freddy began withcatandrat, those being the words he first learned to read. Frank, the older and wiser, experimented with bow-wow, moo-moo and other onomatopoetic syllables, but with equal unsuccess. The baby wouldn’t even sayO.
On Saturday afternoon, Seth Miller himself drove them over to the parsonage, Miss Penny having loaned her pony. Mr. Langley came to the gate and proudly and rather spectacularly bore the baby into the house as if it were a royal infant. He removed his little bonnet and cloak with surprising deftness, admiring the swan’s down border of the hood as if it were ermine. Big Bell stood at the end of the passage with a wistful expression on her homely face and Anna tiptoed past Mrs. Langley’s door to let her see the baby first.
But the emotion displayed by the giantess gave the girl pause. On the threshold of Mrs. Langley’s room she was seized with sudden apprehension. Suppose it should be too much for the invalid! Her reiterated phrase as to its breaking her heart to see the baby acquireda warning significance. On a sudden Anna wished with all her heart that she hadn’t insisted. Suppose the shock were too much for Mrs. Langley!
“We’re here,” she said faintly, ready to back out across the threshold at a word.
“Come up near,” Mrs. Langley bade her more hoarsely than usual and not at all reassuringly. She obeyed tremblingly.
Taking the customary chair, she settled the baby comfortably and fixed her eyes upon his wisp of hair. If she hadn’t heard her heart beating wildly she wouldn’t have believed that she breathed at all.
For a few moments Mrs. Langley peered at the child in silence. He was beautifully dressed, but he wasn’t at all what she had expected from Anna’s and her husband’s accounts. He wasn’t even what a baby would naturally have been expected to be apart from pardonable exaggeration. He wasn’t round nor rosy nor pretty; he looked like nothing so much as a very ugly rubber doll dressed in fine raiment. Moreover, Ella Langley had so dreaded the ordeal that cold sweat stood upon her forehead in beads.
None the less, as she gazed, her heart warmed. There was, somehow, something appealing in his big, mournful eyes and plaintive little white, pinched face and perhaps even in the very want of baby charms. The woman hadn’t seen a child for years upon years and suddenly her heart yearned towards this one overwhelmingly.
“O Anna, let me take him in my arms,” she entreatedin a voice Anna had never heard before. Surprised and delighted, and without for the moment considering the significance of it, the girl rose quickly to put the baby into the outstretched arms.
But for the first time Joe, Junior, who went mournfully wherever he was placed, indifferent to all but Anna, resisted—resisted convulsively. Springing back with a strength he had not seemed to possess, he clung to Anna with a grasp that was painful in its intensity. Then as Mrs. Langley’s hand fell gently upon his shoulder, he uttered a piercing cry—such a shriek as had never before echoed within the parsonage walls. His arms tight about Anna’s neck, clutching like a frightened wild animal, Joe, Junior, continued to shriek and without pause.
Never before since Anna had known him had the baby uttered a sound above a mere whimper. The girl’s blood congealed for terror. As he continued to scream in a manner that seemed to stop her heart and paralyze her muscles, she stood motionless for a few seconds. Recovering herself, she fled wildly from the room.
She never knew when the baby stopped screaming. Snatching his wraps, in some manner she got him into them, and careless of her own, rushed out of the house and through the gate, flying along the village street in the direction of the Hollow and home. And before the minister, who was in the garret, happily occupied in searching for toys or something that might take the place of toys, had located the strange sound or realised what it meant, Anna Miller and Joe, Junior, were out of sight.