CHAPTER XVI
THE blinds were raised high and the sun streamed in over so brilliant a Brussels carpet that the carefully cherished one in Miss Penny’s parlour would have seemed almost dingy beside it. And the dimness having vanished, the room seemed to have expanded—to have thrust out its boundary walls in all directions. Extra furniture had been moved in—though not, probably, on that account—which imparted an hospitable if rather grotesquely amusing air. There were chairs of all shapes and sizes, tables and stands, hassocks, an extra what-not, an Indian cabinet, and such an array of tidies, antimacassars, lambrequins, and afghans as only a country parsonage can collect through various periods and many years of ‘fancy-work.’ One of the larger of the extra tables held the parlour clock, which was surmounted by a bronze statuette representing a barefooted maiden with a pitcher, and the other, the great silver water-pitcher with elves clambering over the handle which had been the wedding gift from the church. The medicine bottles had been cleared away and the stand that had held them was adorned only by the framed photograph of little Ella May’s monument resting on a gay mat of shaded red worsteds.
Nevertheless it was not this transformation which the other Miller girl noticed first, nor was it considerable in comparison with the real transformation. After a vague, momentary realisation of the sunshine and the gorgeous purple and crimson roses of the border of the carpet, the girl was lost in wonder as she stared incredulously at the figure in the familiar yet strange arm chair.
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. She forgot all the neat, deprecatory little speeches she had prepared for every emergency save this overwhelming surprise.
“O Mrs. Langley! you look simplyswell!” she cried, dropping into a three-cornered chair that might have seemed perilously near. “And here’s little Joe, Junior, come way across the city from the Hollow to the Bowery to tell you he’s going to celebrate his first Christmas in ten days.”
She held her breath. But the baby surveyed the scene calmly with that new keenness of observation of his. Apparently nothing suggested to him that itwas the same wherein he had been so terrified a fortnight since. He stared coolly at the lady in the flowered chair, the lotos blossoms and birds of paradise of which hadn’t been visible in the darkened room, scrutinizing her gravely but without either recognition or disapproval.
None the less, it was only with a tremendous effort of will that Anna rose and deliberately put the child into Mrs. Langley’s arms. For a moment her heart stood still. But to-day there was no scream. Little Joe did not even seek to come back to Anna. His gravity seemed, indeed, rather to lift than to deepen. He cuddled down in the stranger’s arms in a manner that implied an absent-minded desire to be comfortable while he completed his survey. For he made haste to study the bright colours of the worsted mat. Thence his gaze roved to the photograph in the frame. He looked at it hard, glanced at the lady who held him then turned to Anna.
“Baa-baa!” he exclaimed suddenly, very clearly and rather dramatically and stretched out his little hand towards the picture.
Mr. Langley being summoned, had also to pause on the threshold. He was almost overwhelmed by the transformation, for which he was wholly unprepared. For Big Bell had helped her mistress carry through everything without his knowledge. He hadn’t so much as had inkling of the fact that the blinds had been raised every day a bit higher and forprogressively longer intervals leading up to this handsome crisis. He felt absolutely dazed as he looked at his wife, as if he, too, had been dwelling in semi-darkness the while. He hadn’t seen her clearly for years upon years and one might have expected the strong light now to be disillusioning rather than flattering. But not so. Russell Langley could scarcely believe that the comely looking woman in the gay, flowered chair with the child cherished in her arms was his wife,—nor, indeed, that he was himself.
But somehow when his eyes wandered and fell upon the other Miller girl, the sight of her steadied him. Anna was as real as she was true blue. Wherefore everything was real, even that splotch of sunshine on the purple and crimson carpet which had so enchanted his youthful masculine fancy.
“What are you standing there for, Russell?” asked his wife in a voice and with a manner that were singularly what they would have been had husband and wife come through the twenty years hand-in-hand instead of separately. “Come here and listen to this wonderful baby.”
He obeyed as one in a dream. But when he stood over her, as he bent and kissed her, it cost him an effort not to try to take the child from her into his own arms. Mrs. Langley pointed her lean finger towards the lamb in the picture.
“What’s that, baby? What’s that, darling child?” she begged his royal highness to declare.
“Baa-baa,” returned the child, and looking up toAnna almost smiled. The girl dropped at his feet enraptured. Then she caught sight of the giantess as she had endeavoured to peep in unseen and called her in. Bell joined the group in an instant.
“O an’ the little angel he is, ma’am!” she exclaimed. “O to have him in me arrums but the oncet. 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. But when Bell put a bright blue worsted mat with a fringe of tassels on top of her head and cocked it at the baby, winking one eye, and the baby actually and unmistakably smiled, Mrs. Langley smiled, too. Nevertheless, she couldn’t endure it another second and demanded that Joe, Junior, be returned to her at once.
Bell was bold enough to ask her if she felt she was strong enough, and then gave him up reluctantly. “I’ve a way with ’em same’s ever,” she declared defiantly. “I brought up my sister’s babies till her man married again, and when I first went into service it was as a nurse.” She would have gone on, but suddenly her feelings overcame her and she turned and fled.
On her way home, Anna prudently decided to saynothing of the marvel of the baby’s talking until after he should have gone to sleep. After that had happened she related the story dramatically to the assembled family.
They were all greatly excited, but the boys were wild with anticipation and could scarcely wait until morning. Though it was Sunday and dark, they were up and dressed at six o’clock and had a long, weary wait before the hero made his appearance. But the instant Joe, Junior, finished his porridge, they fetched his picture book. It was already open at L and Anna was as much delighted as they when he promptly said Baa! to the lamb.
“Ask him something else, quick!” cried Freddy, as if there were not a moment to lose.
“O Freddy, that’s no fair. He’s only a baby. You mustn’t expect too much of him,” cautioned Anna.
“No, indeed, Fred Miller, don’t you dare turn that page,” added the elder brother sternly. “You’ll get him mixed up and scared and then he’ll never say baa again. Don’t you dare. We’ll practise him a while on this now.”
Freddy snatched the book, opened it at random in his haste, and before Frank could interfere demanded of the baby whatthatmight be. The choice was unfortunate,thatbeing an hippopotamus with a gaping red mouth.
“Moo moo!” cried the baby almost dramatically, and the boys shouted for joy. Then alike unmindful of threats and warnings, they went through the book,and the astonishing baby had an answer for every question. He wasn’t always right, but he only appeared the more clever. He saidbow-wowfor the camel but he gave a really creditable roar for the cinnamon bear.
In truth, Joe, Junior, seemed to have come into his own. Not only did Anna and the boys hang over him spell-bound and Seth Miller seem glued to the spot, but Mrs. Miller left her work not only patiently but eagerly whenever the boys summoned her, and once she bent over the baby and kissed him.
Not long after the others had gone to service, Mrs. Lorraine came in. She made Anna lie down on the sofa and sat beside her.
“I understand the baby has begun to talk,” she observed.
“O Mrs. Lorraine! Already? Who told you?” asked the girl eagerly.
“Your father and mother and Frank each told me separately, and Frank and Freddy together. And Miss Penny told me last evening. Mr. Langley told someone and Mr. Phelps heard it at the post office.”
“I’m glad ma told you,” Anna remarked. “She’s beginning to take to him. She kissed him this morning.”
Mrs. Lorraine sighed. Anna had been pale when she came in. Now her cheeks were crimson and her eyes too bright. She was always thin, but to-day her face looked pinched. Anna was second only to Alice herself in Mrs. Lorraine’s heart.
“Anna, I wish you would find a home for that baby or let some of us,” she said anxiously. “The responsibility is too much for you. Many people would be glad to take him, I am sure.”
“Glad! my goodness, they’d jump at the chance!” rejoined Anna. “And well they might. I did think that I would give him away, but I don’t believe now that I could part with him. And it’s different now. The boys are crazy over him and so is pa. And now that ma——”
Mrs. 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. And your school-mates——”
As Anna sat up, suddenly she looked so distressed that Mrs. Lorraine’s heart failed her. She had never been a very considerate woman—hadn’t taken any thought to avoid hurting the feelings of others. But she must have become more sensitive of late. Certainly it hurt her to hurt the girl before her.
“You see, dear child, you are just the sort of person everyone wants a share of, but little Joe quitemonopolises you,” she went on more gently. “You and Alice were readingRetaliationthe other day, you know. Well, you’re like the line on Burke. You give up to Joe, Junior, what was meant for mankind.”
Anna laughed, though ruefully. She rose and made a movement to smooth her hair, then remembered that her braid was gone and shook her short locks. Seating herself in a straight chair, she folded her hands over her knee.
“One reason why I hate to give him up, Mrs. Lorraine, is because he’s Bessy’s baby and Joe’s,” she began wistfully. “He’s the only part of them and of that life that I’ve got left, you see. Not that I want ever to go back to it. I love the Hollow and Farleigh and all the people, and yet there’s something that makes me feel I don’t want to forget the other altogether. Bessy wore a pompadour that made even me shiver and she chewed gum, and Joe would have looked like a jumping-jack beside Reuben, and yet Bessy and Joe were both true blue. Bessy got all run down while Joe was sick going without things so that he could have milk and eggs, and when he got back to work he went without lunches so that she would think his pay was the same as it had been. And if Hazel or I or any of their friends had had hard luck, they would have taken them in and done everything for them the same as Hazel did for Bessy when the time came.”
She looked entreatingly into Mrs. Lorraine’s dark eyes, which were sympathetic but perplexed.
“You can’t understand how it is, unless you live right among them, but if you once have, there’s something mighty precious in the memory of that life that you wouldn’t lose hold of. If I didn’t want Joe, Junior, myself, I should want him because he’s Bessy’s and Joe’s,” she said earnestly.
The girl was very quiet all the rest of the day. She pondered sadly over what Mrs. Lorraine had said and over what her words had further implied. She had not realised that they had missed her, her mother and the boys and Miss Penny and Alice—Alice most of all, perhaps, though her mother didn’t dream that. Perhaps she could do things for them that others couldn’t, while the baby would really be better off with the Langleys. Mr. Langley and Bell Adams would be wonderful with him and it began to look as if Mrs. Langley would make a creditable mother. And Alice needed her; and Alice’s mother needed something in Alice which perhaps only Anna could watch out for. And Alice had never been really happy until she was twenty and Mrs. Lorraine not until she was forty-five. And both had been so frightfully unhappy. And there was that terrible black shadow of the prison hanging over them for ten years to come.
Giving up Joe, Junior, was of course only what she had planned to do in the first place. It was only what she had worked and struggled for ever since she had returned with the baby. And even before that, she had been longing to discover some means of repaying Mr. Langley for all he had done for Rusty and herfamily in general and to comfort him for losing his little Ella May after all the years. Yet now that she had it within her power to give him something that would be like his heart’s desire, she was grudging it. But O—that darling baby! And he loved her as he cared for no one else.
On a sudden, Anna decided to go to evening service. She had kissed the baby in his sleep and almost thought he smiled, and as she flew over the frozen ground, her heart grew light again. Her own words came back to her. “The baby loves me best.” They echoed in her heart and she almost danced along to their melody. He loved her best and therefore he belonged to her as he could belong to no other. For, after all, there was nothing like love. Advantages and all sorts of material goods couldn’t compete with it. She was going to keep Joe, Junior, always.