Something on the Doorstep--Bill Gray--Is That a Cat?--She's Like
Mother--A Baby's Shoe--Jane Restless
But the annoyance for which Mr Robins had been preparing himself was
not repeated; the persecution, if such had been intended, was not
continued. As the days passed by he began to leave off listening and
lying awake; he came out from his house or from the church without
furtive glances of expectation to the right and left; he lost that
constant feeling of apprehension and the necessity to nerve himself for
resistance. He had never been one to gossip or concern himself with
other people's matters, and Jane Sands had never brought the news of
the place to amuse her master, as many in her place would have done; so
now he had no way of knowing if his daughter's return had been known in
the place, or what comments the neighbours passed on it.
He fancied that Jane looked a little more anxious than usual; but then
her sister was lying ill at Stokeley, and she was often there with her,
so that accounted for her anxiety. It accounted, too, for her being
away one evening a fortnight later, when Mr Robins coming in in the
dusk found something laid on his doorstep. His thoughts had been
otherwise occupied, but the moment his eyes fell on the
shepherd's-plaid shawl wrapping the bundle at his feet, he knew what it
was, and recognised a renewed attempt to coerce him into doing what he
had vowed he would not. He saw it all in a minute, and understood that
now Jane Sands was in the plot against him, and she had devised this
way of putting the child in his path because she was afraid to come to
him openly and say what she wanted. Perhaps even now she was watching,
expecting to see him fall into the trap they had set for him; but they
should find they were very much mistaken.
His first resolution was to fetch the police constable and get him to
take the child right off to the workhouse, but on second thoughts he
altered his purpose. Such a step would set all the tongues in the
place wagging, and, little as he cared for public opinion, it would not
be pleasant for every one to be telling how he had sent his grandchild
to the workhouse. Grandchild? pshaw! it was Martin Blake's brat.
The child was sleeping soundly, everything was quiet, the dusk was
gathering thick and fast. Why should he not put the child outside some
other cottage, and throw the responsibility of disposing of it on
someone else, and be clear of it himself altogether? The idea shaped
itself with lightning rapidity in his brain, and he passed quickly in
review the different cottages in the place and their inmates, and in
spite of his indifference to Martin Blake's brat, he selected one where
he knew a kindly reception, at any rate for the night, would be given.
He knew more about the Grays than of most of the village people. Bill
was a favourite of his, and had been with him that afternoon after
school to fetch a book Mr Robins had promised to lend him. He was a
bright, intelligent boy, and had a sweet voice, and the organist found
him a more apt pupil than any of the others, and had taken some pains
with him, and when he was ill the winter before had been to see him,
and so had come to know his mother, and her liking for anything young
and weak and tender.
Their cottage was at some distance, to be sure, and Mr Robins had not
had much to do with babies of late years, and was a little distrustful
of his ability to carry one so far without rousing it and so
proclaiming its presence, but there was a path across the fields but
little frequented, by which he could convey the child without much risk
of being met and observed.
And now the great thing to aim at was to carry out his plan as quickly
as possible, before any one was aware of the child being at his house;
and he gathered up the little warm bundle as gingerly as he knew how,
and was on his way to the gate, when the sound of approaching steps
along the road made him draw back and, unlocking the door, carry the
child in. The steps stopped at the gate and turned in, and one of the
choirmen came to the door.
There were little movements and soft grumblings inside the shawl in the
organist's arms, and he turned quite cold with apprehension.
'Anyone at home?' sounded Millet's jovial voice at the open door.
''Evening, Mr Robins--are you there? All in the dark, eh? I wanted a
couple of words with you about that song.'
'I 'll come directly,' sounded the organist's voice, with a curious
jogging effect in it, such as Millet was used to sometimes in his
conversations with his wife at the children's bed-time. And then
Millet heard him go up-stairs, and it was some minutes before he came
down again, and then in such a queer absent condition that if it had
been any other man in the parish than Mr Robins, whose sobriety was
unimpeachable, Millet would have said that he had had a drop too much.
He did not ask him in or strike a light, but stood at the door
answering quite at haphazard, and showing such indifference on the
vital question of a certain song suiting Millet's voice, that that
usually good-natured man was almost offended.
'Well, I 'll wish you good evening,' he said at last (it seemed to
Robins that he had been hours at the door); 'perhaps you 'll just think
it over and let me know. Hullo!--is that a cat you have up there? I
thought I heard something squeal out just then.'
Mr Robins was not generally given to shaking hands--indeed, some of the
choir thought he was too much stuck up to do so; but just then he
seized Millet's hand and shook it quite boisterously, at the same time
advancing with the apparent intention of accompanying him in a friendly
manner to the gate, a movement which compelled Millet to back in the
same direction, and cut short his farewell remarks, which frequently
lasted for ten minutes or more. And all the way to the gate Robins was
talking much quicker and louder than was his usual custom, and he ended
by almost pushing Millet out at the gate, all the time expressing great
pleasure at having seen him, and pressing him to come in again any
evening he could spare the time, and have a pipe and a bit of supper
with him--such unheard-of hospitality that Millet went home quite
persuaded that the old man was, as he expressed it to his wife, 'going
off his chump;' so that it was quite a relief to meet him two days
later at the choir practice as formal and distant in his manners as
ever.
Meanwhile Mr Robins had hastened back to his bedroom where the baby lay
asleep on his bed; for it had been really Jane Sands' cat whose voice
Millet heard, and not, as Mr Robins believed, the waking child's.
It was quite dark up there, and he could only feel the warm, little
heap on his bed, but he struck a match to look at it. The shawl had
fallen away, showing its little dark head and round sleeping face, with
one little fist doubled up against its cheek and half-open mouth, and
the other arm thrown back, the tiny hand lying with the little moist,
creased palm turned up.
'She's like mother, I 'm sure she is.' He remembered the words and
scanned the small sleeping face. Well, perhaps there was a likeness,
the eyelashes and the gypsy tint of the complexion; but just then the
match went out and the organist remembered there was no time to be
wasted in trying to see likenesses in Martin Blake's brat. But just as
he was lifting the baby cautiously from his bed, a sudden thought
struck him. Zoe was to be her name; well, it should be so, though he
had no concern in her name or anything else; so he groped about for
pencil and paper, and wrote the name in big printing letters to
disguise his hand and make it as distinct as possible, though even so,
as we have seen already, the name caused considerable perplexity to the
sponsors. And then he pinned the paper on to the shawl, and taking the
child in his arms set out across the field path to the Grays' cottage.
There was a cold air, though it was a May night, but the child lay warm
against him, and he remembered how its mother had said she could feel
the likeness even in the dark, and he could not resist laying his cold
finger on the warm little cheek under the shawl; and then, angry with
himself for the throb that the touch sent to his heart, hastened his
steps, and had soon reached the Grays' cottage and deposited his burden
just inside the gate, where a few minutes after Gray found it. He
could see Mrs Gray plainly as she sat at her work: a pleasant, motherly
face; but he did not linger to look at it, but turned away and retraced
his steps along the field path home. He found himself shivering as he
went; the air seemed to have grown more chilly and penetrating without
that warm burden against his heart, and the unaccustomed weight had
made his arms tremble.
Somehow the house looked dull and uncomfortable, though Jane Sands had
come in and lighted the lamp, and was laying his supper. Up-stairs
there was a hollow on his bed where something had lain, and by the side
of the bed he found a baby's woollen shoe, which might have betrayed
him to Jane if she had gone up-stairs. But though he put it out of
sight directly, he felt sure that the whole matter was no secret from
Jane, and that she had been an accomplice in the trick that had been
played on him, and he smiled to himself at the thought of how he had
outwitted her, and of how puzzled she must be to know what had become
of the baby.
He did his best to appear as tranquil and composed as usual, as if
nothing had happened to disturb the ordinary current of his life, and
he forced himself to make a few remarks on indifferent subjects when
she came into the room.
She had evidently been crying, and was altogether in a nervous and
upset condition. She forgot half the things he wanted at supper, and
her hand trembled so that she nearly overturned the lamp. More than
once she stopped and looked at him as if she were nerving herself to
speak, and he knew quite well the question that was trembling on her
lips. 'Where is the child? Master, where is the child?' But he would
not help her in any way, and he quite ignored the agitation that was
only too evident; and even when he went into the kitchen to fetch his
pipe, and found her with her face buried in her arms on the kitchen
table, shaking with irrepressible sobs, he retreated softly into the
passage and called to her to bring the pipe, and when, after a long
delay, she brought it in, he was apparently absorbed in his paper, and
took no notice of her tear-stained face and quivering lips.
He heard her stirring far into the night, and once she went into the
little room next his that used to be his daughter's, and which no one
had used since she left, and in the silence of the night again he could
hear heartbreaking sobs half-stifled.
'Poor soul! poor soul!' he said to himself. 'She's a good creature is
Jane, and no doubt she's bitterly disappointed. I 'll make it up to
her somehow. She's a faithful, good soul!'
He was restless and uncomfortable himself, and he told himself he had
taken cold and was a bit feverish. It was feverish fancy, no doubt,
that made him think the hollow where the child's light weight had
rested was still perceptible, but this fancy outlasted the fever of
that night and the cold that caused it, for there was hardly a night
afterwards when Mr Robins did not detect its presence, even with all
Jane Sands' thorough shaking of the feather-bed and careful spreading
of sheets and blankets. If he dropped asleep for a minute that night
the child was in his arms again, heavy as lead, weighing him down,
down, down, into some unfathomable gulf, or he was feeling for it in
the dark, and its face was cold as death; and more than once he woke
with a start, feeling certain that a child's cry had sounded close to
his bed.