Jane Hard at Work--Clothes for the Baby--Jane Returns--Jane Singing
over her Work--Jane's Selfish Absorption--For a Poor Person's
Child--The Organist in Church
There was one thing that puzzled Mr Robins extremely, and this was Jane
Sands' behaviour. He was convinced that she had been a party to the
trick that had been played off on him, and she was evidently full of
some secret trouble and anxiety, for which he could only account by
attributing it to her disappointment about the baby, and perhaps
distrust of the care that would be taken of it by others.
Mr Robins often discovered her in tears, and she was constantly going
out for hours at a time, having always hitherto been almost too much of
a stay-at-home. He suspected that these lengthened absences meant
visits to the Grays' cottage, and that baby-worship that women find so
delightful; but he found out accidentally that she had never been near
the cottage since the baby's arrival, and when he made an excuse of
sending a book by her to Bill to get her to go there, she met the boy
at the bottom of the lane, and did not go on to the cottage.
As to what he had overheard the men saying about the gypsy girl, he
felt sure that Jane had only said this to put people on the wrong
scent, though, certainly, deception of any sort was very unlike her.
Once he found her sitting up late at night at work on some small frocks
and pinafores, and he thought that at last the subject was coming to
the surface, and especially as she coloured up and tried to hide the
work when he came in.
'Busy?' he said. 'You seem very hard at work. Who are you working
for?'
'A baby,' she stammered, 'a baby----that my sister's taking care of.'
She was so red and confused that he felt sure she was saying what was
not true, but he forgave her for the sake of the baby for whom he
firmly believed the work was being done, and who, to be sure, when he
saw it in Mrs Gray's arms, looked badly in want of clothes more fitted
to its size than Bill's old pinafores.
He stood for a minute fingering the pink, spotted print of infantile
simplicity of pattern, and listening to the quick click, click, of her
needle as it flew in and out; but it was not till he had turned away
and was half out of the kitchen, that she began a request that had been
on the tip of her tongue all the time, but which she had not ventured
to bring out while he stood at the table.
'I was going to ask--if you 'd no objection--seeing that they're no
good to any one'----
Now it was coming out, and he turned with an encouraging smile:
'Well, what is it?'
'There are some old baby-clothes put away in a drawer up-stairs. They
're rough dried, and I've kept an eye on them, and took them out now
and then to see as the moth didn't get in them'----
'Yes?'
'Well, sir--this baby that I'm working for is terrible short of
clothes, and I thought I might take a few of them for her'----
She did not look at him once as she spoke, or she might have been
encouraged by the look on his face, which softened into a very
benignant, kindly expression.
'To be sure! to be sure!' he said. 'I 've no objection to your taking
some of them for the baby--at your sister's.' He spoke the last words
with some meaning, and she looked quickly up at him and dropped her
work as if tumultuous words were pressing to be spoken, but stopped
them with an effort and went on with her work, only with heightened
colour and trembling fingers.
She was not slow to avail herself of his permission, for that very
night, before she went to bed, he heard her in the next room turning
out the drawer where the old baby-clothes had been stored away ever
since little Edith had discarded them for clothes of a larger size.
And next morning she was up betimes, starching and ironing and
goffering dainty little frills with such a look of love and
satisfaction on her face, that he had not the heart to hint that she
had availed herself somewhat liberally of his permission, and that less
dainty care and crispness might do equally well for the baby, bundled
up in Mrs Gray's kind but crumpling arms, to take the place of Bill's
faded pinafore.
That afternoon he purposely took his way home over the hillside and
down the lane by the Grays' cottage, with a conviction that he should
see the baby tricked out in some of those frilled and tucked little
garments over which Jane Sands had lavished so much time and attention
that morning. But to his surprise he saw her in much the same costume
as before, only the pinafore this time was washed-out lavender instead
of pink, and, as she was in Bill's arms, and he, as the youngest of the
family, being inexperienced in nursing, a more crumpled effect was
produced than his mother had done. He could only conclude that Jane
had not found time yet to take the things, or that Mrs Gray was
reserving them for a more showy occasion.
But he found Jane just returning as he came up to his house, and she
looked far more hot and dusty than the short walk up the lane to the
Grays accounted for, but with a beaming look on her kind face that had
not been there for many a day.
'Well,' he said, 'Jane, have you been to Stokeley?'
'Yes,' she said, 'and I took the things you were good enough to say the
baby might have. They _were_ pleased.'
She, too, spoke with a curious meaning in her voice and manner which
somehow faded when she saw the want of response in his face. Indeed
there was a very distinct feeling of disappointment and irritation in
his feelings. For after all those clothes had actually gone to some
other baby. Well! well! it is a selfish world after all, and each of
us has his own interests which take him up and engross him. No doubt
this little common child at Stokeley was all in all to Jane Sands, and
she was glad enough of a chance to pick all the best out of those baby
clothes up-stairs that he remembered his young wife preparing so
lovingly for her baby and his. It gave him quite a pang to think of
some little Sands or Jenkins adorned with these tucks he had seen run
so carefully and frills sewn so daintily. He had evidently given Jane
credit for a great deal more unselfishness and devotion to him and his
than she really felt, for she had all the time been busy working and
providing for her own people, when he had thought she was full of
consideration for Edith's child. Pshaw! he had to pull himself
together and take himself to task. For even in these few days he had
grown to think of that little brown-faced, dark-eyed baby as his
grandchild, instead of Martin Blake's brat. Insensibly and naturally,
too, the child had brought back the memory of its mother, first as
baby, then as sweet and winsome little child; then as bright, wilful,
coaxing girl, and, lastly, unless he kept his thoughts well in check,
there followed on these brighter memories the shadow of a white worn
woman under the yew-tree in the churchyard, and of a voice that said
'Father.'
That uninteresting child at Stokeley apparently required a great supply
of clothes, for Jane Sands was hard at work again that evening, and
when he came in from the choir practice, he heard her singing over her
work as she used to do in old days, and when he went in for his pipe,
she looked up with a smile that seemed to expect a sympathetic
response, and made no effort to conceal the work as she had done the
day before.
He stood morosely by the fireplace for a minute, shaking the ashes out
of his pipe.
'You're very much taken up with that baby,' he said crossly; and she
looked up quickly, thinking that perhaps he had a hole in his stocking,
or a button off his shirt to complain of, as a consequence of her being
engrossed in other work. But he went on without looking at her, and
apparently deeply absorbed in getting an obstinate bit of ash out of
the pipe bowl.
'There's a child at Mrs Gray's they say is very short of clothes. That
baby, you know'----
'That baby that was found in the garden,' Jane said in such a curiously
uninterested tone of voice that he could not resist glancing round at
her; but she was just then engaged in that mysterious process of
'stroking the gathers,' which the intelligent feminine reader will
understand requires a certain attention. If this indifference were
assumed, Jane Sands was a much better actor and a more deceptive
character than he had believed possible; if she were too entirely
absorbed in her own people to give even a thought to her young
mistress's baby, she was not the Jane Sands he thought he had known for
the last twenty years. The only alternative was that she knew nothing
about the baby having been left on his door-step, nor of the meeting
with his daughter in the churchyard which had preceded it.
What followed convinced him that this was the case, though it also a
little favoured the other hypothesis of her selfish absorption in her
own people.
'Perhaps,' he said, 'you could look out some of those baby things
up-stairs if there are any left.'
'What? I beg your pardon, sir. What did you say?'
'Those baby clothes up-stairs that you gave to your sister's baby.'
'Those!' she said, with a strange light of indignation in her eyes,
more even than you would have expected in the most grasping and greedy
person on a proposal that something should be snatched from her hungry
maw and given to another. 'Those! Little Miss Edith's things! that
her own mother made and that I 've kept so careful all these years in
case Miss Edith's own should need them!'
You see she forgot in the excitement of the moment that these were the
very things she had been giving away so freely to that common little
child at Stokeley; but women are so inconsistent.
'Well?' he said, as her breath failed her in this unusual torrent of
remonstrance. 'Why not?'
'For a little gypsy child! a foundling that nobody knows anything
about! Don't do it, master, don't! I couldn't abear to see it. Here,
let me get a bit of print and flannel and run together a few things for
the child. I 'd rather do it a hundred times than that those things
should be given away--and just now too!'
It was very plain to Mr Robins that she did not know; but all the same
he was half inclined to point out that it was not a much more
outrageous thing to bestow these cherished garments on a foundling than
on her sister's baby; but she was evidently so unconscious of her
inconsistency in the matter that he did not know how to suggest it to
her.
'I 'm going into Stokeley to-morrow,' she went on, 'and if you liked I
could get some print and make it a few frocks. I saw some very neat at
fourpence three-farthings that would wash beautiful, and a good stout
flannel at elevenpence. Oh! not like that,' she said as he laid a
finger on some soft Saxony flannel with a pink edge which lay on the
table. 'Something more serviceable for a poor person's child.'
Well, perhaps it was better that Jane should not know who the baby was
of whom she spoke so contemptuously. A baby was none the better or
healthier for being dressed up in frills and lace; and Mrs Gray was a
thoroughly clean motherly woman, and would do well by the child.
All the same, when Jane came back from Stokeley next day and unfolded
the parcel she had brought from the draper's there, he could not help
feeling that that somewhat dingy lavender, though it might wash like a
rag, was, to say the least, uninteresting, and the texture of the
flannel, even to his undiscriminating eye, was a trifle rough and
coarse for baby limbs.
He knew nothing (how should he?) of the cut and make of baby clothes,
but somehow, these, under Jane's scissors and needle, did not take such
attractive proportions as those she had prepared for the other baby;
nor did the stitches appear so careful and minute, though Jane's worst
enemy, if she had any, could not have accused her of putting bad work
even into the hem of a duster, let alone a baby's frock. He also
noticed that, industriously as she worked at the lavender print, her
ardour was not sufficient to last beyond bedtime, and that, when the
clock struck ten, her work was put away, without any apparent
reluctance, even when, to all appearances, it was so near completion
that anyone would have given the requisite ten minutes just from the
mere desire of finishing.
That Sunday afternoon, when the curious name Zoe, sounding across the
church in the strange clergyman's voice, startled the organist, who had
not expected the christening to take place that day, one of the
distracting thoughts which made him make so many mistakes in the music,
was wondering what Jane Sands would think of the name, and whether it
would rouse any suspicion in her mind and enlighten her a little as to
who the baby at Mrs Gray's really was. The name was full of memories
and associations to him; surely it must be also a little to Jane Sands.
But of all Sunday afternoons in the year, she had chosen this to go
over to Stokeley church. Why, parson and clerk were hardly more
regular in their attendance than Jane Sands as a rule; it was almost an
unheard-of thing for her seat to be empty. But to-day it was so, and
the row of little boys whom her gentle presence generally awed into
tolerable behaviour, indulged unchecked in all the ingenious
naughtiness that infant mind and body are capable of in church.
She came in rather late with his tea, apologising for having kept him
waiting.
'It was christening Sunday,' she said, and then she looked at him
rather wistfully.
Perhaps she has heard, he thought; perhaps the neighbours have told her
the name, and she is beginning to guess.
'And the baby has been called'---- she hesitated and glanced timidly at
him.
'Well?' he said encouragingly, 'what is the name?'
'Edith,' she answered, 'was one name.'
Pshaw! it was the baby at her sister's she was talking of all the time!
He turned irritably away.
'He can't bear to hear the name, even now; or, perhaps, he's cross at
being kept waiting for tea,' thought Jane Sands.