CHAPTER XX
SETH MILLER returned home shortly after the boys. Greatly alarmed, he rushed over to Miss Penny’s and frightened her still more. But Mrs. Lorraine spoke calmly and suggested that he get Walter Phelps to drive him over to the post office, enquiring all the way, and if he did not find the baby meantime, someone in the crowd collected for the mail would be sure to have tidings of him.
The stage was late and they reached the post office just as it drove up. Anna stepped out, white and anxious. She had learned the news at Wenham just in time to catch the coach.
The girl did not lose an instant. She consulted the post master who had enquired of everyone who had come in. He had no information to offer. Her father had stopped at every house except the parsonage, Miss Penny having cautioned him not to go there because of the invalid. Wherefore Seth Miller supposed that they had better be working over Wenham way.
But Anna decided otherwise. Asking Walter to remain at the post office for possible tidings, she had her father drive her to the parsonage. Three minutes after she had let herself quietly in, she came running out to the buggy.
“Mrs. Langley’s gone, too,” she said. “Dear me, isn’t it great luck that Mr. Langley’s way at the further end of the Hollow? We met him, and I suppose he’s talking school business with Mr. Phillips. He’d be perfectly crazy, you know.”
She climbed into the buggy.
“Did you look in the garret?” her father enquired.
“I don’t know about that, but Bell went everywhere else,” Anna returned. Her father stared at her for she seemed less anxious.
“Anna, someone may have kidnapped the two of ’em,” he said hoarsely. “I don’t know as you have heard, but they do say there’s a strange man around the village peering in windows at night and the like.”
Anna almost laughed. “They’d bring Mrs. Langley back when daylight came,” she returned flippantly.
She directed her father to drive down the Wenham road, beyond the house where they had lived when the boys were babies, to the bridge and to watch from there, dropping her at a point she would indicate.
“Give me your bandana,” she ordered. “Now, Pa, if you see me waving it, you come straight towards it as far as you can come with a horse and wait. I’m going cross lots but you may see me later against the western sky line.”
“O Anna, I don’t dare have you go off alone away from beaten tracks with strange men and kidnappers about,” he protested. “Let me hitch the horse and go with you.”
But Anna laughed, reassured him, and disappeared.Making a bit of detour to avoid being seen, she headed for the cemetery. Anxious still, she was nevertheless relieved, and once on the direct path, ran all the way, leaping ditches, pushing through underbrush and taking the steepest part of the bank as if it were a plain. When she reached the top, she was hot and breathless. Throwing her jacket on top of the wall, she vaulted it lightly and made for a point whence she could see the Langley lot. Even while she caught her breath and wondered if she should dare look, she heard a little familiar sound.
The girl stopped short. For a second she could not move. The complete relief from suspense was so great that she had to choke back her tears. For there they were, just where she hard hardly dared to think of them as being, Mrs. Langley wrapped in a gay old-fashioned paisley shawl with her head uncovered, sitting on the ground with Joe, Junior, in her lap. The baby was fondling the little marble image and murmuring baa-baa, the while Mrs. Langley looked on as if she were in Paradise.
As she stole towards the little group and stood before them, Anna was unaware that tears were streaming down her cheeks. The baby saw her first and smiled. “Baa-baa” he cried out stretching out his hands, and Mrs. Langley looked up quickly. Her expression changed instantly from beatitude to deep guilt.
“You said you would give him to me for a Christmas present, anyhow, Anna,” she declared, half defiantly, half-entreatingly.
“Yes, but you didn’t—take him,” gasped Anna dropping down beside them. She was hugging Joe, Junior, but she did not take him into her arms.
“I’m sorry I didn’t. I’ve been sorry ever since. But you took me so by surprise. Of course I really wanted him when I could straighten out my thoughts.”
“We have all been frightened nearly to death thinking the little fellow was lost,” Anna remarked reproachfully.
“I didn’t think of that,” Mrs. Langley returned meekly, stroking the baby’s little hand. “I saw him go by and I wanted to see him so badly that I got my shawl and followed as far as the post office. He was all alone and so near the road that a horse might have run over him if it shied. Really, Anna, I was just meaning to stand by him until your brothers came out; but he reached out his little hands and I had to take him—he knew me, you see. For he said Baa-baa, and it seemed as if he was asking me to bring him to see this little lamb; and as I wanted to see it myself, I brought him up here.”
“Brought him up here!” exclaimed Anna suddenly realizing the magnitude of the action. “How in this world did you ever do it?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure, but he didn’t seem heavy. He’s so still, I suppose. I didn’t mean to stay at all, but it is so warm and pleasant; and baby has been so happy that I forgot everything else.”
Meanwhile, Seth Miller had driven out to the bridgeand waited, talking the while to the Phelps horse which, like most of the horses in the village, was a great pet and like one of the family. Presently he caught a flash of red among the pines on the hill, saw his daughter waving to him, and drove on until he saw her waiting at the lower gate of the cemetery with the baby and a strange, foreign-looking woman whom he took to be a gypsy who had probably been carrying the baby away when Anna caught her. Again and again that night at home he exclaimed over his surprise to think that the old and faded woman with the piercing black eyes who might have been a gypsy crone was none other than the handsome Mr. Langley’s wife. And yet he granted she was pleasant-spoken and the baby seemed to take to her amazingly and he only hoped she wasn’t out of her head.
Anna got out with Mrs. Langley at the parsonage and asked her father to bring the baby in. Seth Miller held the baby close, whispering to him and lengthening the inconsiderable distance by crawling along, the while Anna explained that she would have to go in for a little and asked him to stop at Miss Penny’s with the news and have someone come for her with the pony later.
“And pa, if you see Mr. Langley, send him home right away,” she added eagerly. “Or—if you happen to hear where he is, do go get him and bring him home.”
Seth Miller did not meet Mr. Langley, however, norcould he learn where he was except that he wasn’t in the Hollow. As a matter of fact Mr. Langley was engaged in an affair of some moment.
He had left the parsonage early in the afternoon. Directly after dinner, an informal, self-constituted committee of three men living in the Farleigh end of the village had waited on the minister in his study. Though not taken wholly by surprise, he had been shocked and distressed by the nature of their errand, even while he could not but feel, as he assured them, that they acted within their rights. He would have persuaded them to wait until after Christmas, but he could not insist upon it. And he was grateful to them for coming to him and allowing him to forestall their action so that it should be less shockingly abrupt to those who must suffer thereby.
Hastening from the parsonage, he met Rusty and Anna Miller in the phaeton driving the fat pony. As he had already seen Rusty, he only greeted them in passing. And realising at once that they were on their way to Wenham to meet Reuben, he was thankful to have them out of the way for a good measure of time. His business was with Alice Lorraine, and the fewer people he saw besides the girl herself, the quicker might he dispatch it.
Unhappily, he did not find Alice at home. He looked so concerned when Miss Penny told him that the girl had gone away for the afternoon that Mrs. Lorraine was startled.
“Is it something serious, Mr. Langley?” she asked.
“Yes, Mrs. Lorraine, it is indeed. May I ask if it would be possible to get your daughter within half an hour?”
Mrs. Lorraine feared not. Miss Penny made an excuse and went out. As Mr. Langley resumed his chair, Mrs. Lorraine turned to him despairingly.
“I haven’t the slightest idea where Alice is, Mr. Langley. She left the house an hour ago. Anna and Rusty Miller came over just as we were finishing dinner, and when we looked for Alice she was not to be found.”
“May I ask if she went in the direction of Farleigh?”
“I hardly think she did, Mr. Langley. As a matter of fact, she practically always starts out in that direction, but I do not think she did to-day for if she had we should have seen her. Miss Penny and I both happened to be where we saw everyone who passed over that way for half an hour before we discovered she wasn’t in the house.”
“Then I shall have to trouble you, Mrs. Lorraine,” he said gravely. “I am sorry. I would spare you if I could, but even if I had seen Miss Lorraine first, you would have had to know presently. May I ask you, in the first place, whether you have allowed anyone to occupy the cottage in the lane since you and your daughter have been at Miss Penny’s?”
“O no, Mr. Langley,” she declared so decisively that he frowned unconsciously. “We might as well have given it up, only Alice thought we should keep it until after Christmas. I suppose——”
But she could not go on. His expression disconcerted her.
“And the little building in the rear that is called the shop?” he asked.
“We never used that, anyhow,—never even looked into it, though I believe we have the key.”
He picked up his gloves and looked inside as if to determine the size. Then he looked at her.
“Three men came to me this noon about a matter that has been troubling the village for some little time and which now seems to them to be approaching a crisis,” he began. “This is the situation, Mrs. Lorraine. There has been a strange man around for—it must be upwards of three weeks now. One person and another has caught sight of him at night, and he seems to have looked into the windows of nearly every house in Farleigh. It may be imagination in some cases, but before I had heard anything about the stranger, I felt quite sure one night that there was someone peering in at my study window, and I certainly saw someone slink away from another window at the parsonage about a fortnight since. Someone saw the figure of a man pass across the window in the organ loft at the church one Sunday afternoon, and there have been other similar things—not of great moment when taken separately but which collectively seem to these men and others to constitute a menace to public safety.”
“But Mr. Langley, what has that to do with my—withthe cottage in the lane?” she enquired with a sharp note of pain in her voice.
“They seem to think that the man has hidden there the while. Smoke has been seen a number of times coming from the chimney of the little shop. At first people explained it by saying that Miss Lorraine probably had gone down to fetch something and had made a fire to take off the chill, but lately one thing and another has led them to suspect that that isn’t the right explanation.”
“I have heard of tramps occupying deserted houses,” she remarked.
He had nothing to say. She grew very white. “Did you ask for Alice simply to spare me, Mr. Langley?” she asked.
“No, Mrs. Lorraine,” he replied reluctantly, “it was because I hoped she might be able to throw some light upon the matter. It appears almost certain that she knows something about this mystery in our midst. She has been seen more or less about the lane, and—I don’t credit the particular rumor people have patched up, but——”
“And what is that, Mr. Langley?” she broke in breathlessly.
“They think Alice’s father—that Mr. Lorraine is hereabout—that he has been staying in the shop behind the cottage and that his daughter carries him food and visits him daily.”
For a few seconds, Mrs. Lorraine was too dazed to speak. Alice’s strange conduct seemed to accord withthis tale, and yet—she rallied her forces. It was impossible.
“Alice hears from her father. She had a letter only a day or two ago,” she declared. But even as she spoke, she realised that that wasn’t valid evidence. She knit her brows, then looked up. “But Mr. Langley, if Mr. Lorraine had escaped, why wouldn’t it have been in the papers?” she demanded. “You say this has been going on over three weeks, and—Mr. Lorraine was—well-known.”
“I said something of the sort to these gentlemen,” he returned. “They claimed that such an escape is often kept secret for a time for strategical reasons. But irrespective of that, there is no doubt that someone has been skulking about the village, and that your shop building has been occupied and probably by that person. But for more than a week everything was quiet. No smoke was seen and no one saw any suspicious person and it was decided that the mysterious stranger had departed. But night before last something happened to arouse suspicion again. The men who came to me declare that the tramp or stranger came back at that time and is still here. They say he is in your shop at this moment. The building is being watched now, and they are only awaiting my return to enter and arrest whomever they may find within.”
He rose. “You know nothing about it, Mrs. Lorraine, but there’s nothing to do but to allow them to proceed?”
The echoes of the thundering knocks had hardly died awayThe echoes of the thundering knocks had hardly died away ... when Alice Lorraine appeared.
The echoes of the thundering knocks had hardly died away ... when Alice Lorraine appeared.
The echoes of the thundering knocks had hardly died away ... when Alice Lorraine appeared.
“No. Mr. Langley, there isn’t,” she acknowledged,and asked him if he was going thither. And when he said that he was she asked if she might go along. He acquiesced. After she had spoken to Miss Penny, Mr. Langley handed her into the carriage and they drove to the lane where the minister gave the horse in charge to someone standing about. Going straight to the shop, they found the three men Mr. Langley had seen and the constable.
The latter pounded on the door preliminary to breaking it in. He waited a few seconds. The echoes of the thundering knocks had hardly died away when the door opened and Alice Lorraine appeared before the five men and her mother.