_BY JOSLYN GRAY_
THE OTHER MILLER GIRL
BOUNCING BET
THE JANUARY GIRL
ROSEMARY GREENAWAY
RUSTY MILLER
ELSIE MARLEY, HONEY
KATHLEEN’S PROBATION
_CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS_
THE OTHER MILLER GIRL
[Illustration: “I am so sorry ... but we don’t have company, you know.”
[_Page 53_]
THE
OTHER MILLER GIRL
BY
JOSLYN GRAY
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
Printed in the United States of America
[Illustration]
TO
FLORENCE TEMPLETON GRAY
JANUARY 31, 1922
IN MEMORY OF TODDIE
AND THE DAYS BEFORE THE BIRTHDAY
ON WHICH SHE WAS BANISHED
ILLUSTRATIONS
“I am so sorry--but we don’t have company, you know” _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
“Please, may I come in? I want to--tell you something” 26
Anna took pride and pleasure in ironing the frills and
laces of his little frocks 124
The echoes of the thundering knocks had hardly died
away ... when Alice Lorraine appeared 216
THE OTHER MILLER GIRL
CHAPTER I
On a pleasant Saturday afternoon of the latter part of the September
following the awarding of the Wadsworth prize, Mr. Langley received
three distinct shocks. The first was occasioned by hearing Miss
Penny referred to as an old lady, and the second, which was almost
simultaneous, by learning that Anna Miller was commonly known as the
‘other Miller girl.’ The third, which was more subtle, was also more
personal and might have wrought real havoc but for the slip of a
yellow-haired girl who was characterised thus negatively. Her discovery
of this third shock to Mr. Langley and the action she took led to such
consequences that if it were the fashion now-a-days to invoke the
muse, this history must needs begin by bidding the goddess sing of the
uncommon sense of the other Miller girl.
The church at Farleigh was a really beautiful building. It was only
an old-fashioned New England meeting-house, but its proportions
were perfect for its style and its pillared portico was almost as
appropriate to its structure and environment as the chaste marble
columns of Greece to their more artistic and romantic setting. It stood
on an height truncated by natural forces to form a plateau and was
surrounded by broad lawns shaded by great English elms and a single
oak-tree.
The greensward was as rich and velvety as if the season had been
midsummer and the foliage of the trees as luxuriant and almost as
bright, on this Saturday afternoon of the third week of September
when the minister sauntered slowly up the broad walk leading to the
porch. For the summer had been wet: more than one week had disproved
the old saying that there will always be one fair day in the six to
dry the parson’s shirt. It had been favourable for grass and trees and
uncultivated vegetation but too rainy for crops. The September sunshine
was, however, making amends; and as he glanced at the picturesque
regularity of the fenced and walled fields of a farm across the river,
Mr. Langley said to himself that the harvest would be bountiful after
all if the frosts held off a bare fortnight.
The choir had been rehearsing for the morrow and the women members
were lingering in the porch to chat. The minister had just noticed
that Miss Garland, a member who had been away on a visit in the West
for three months or more, had returned, when he heard her ask who was
staying with old Miss Penny this winter. It gave him a start to hear
Miss Penny called old, though she hadn’t been a young woman when he had
come to the two villages straight from theological school, and if he
had stopped to reckon the years he must have realised that she was well
beyond three score and ten. But he did not stop, for Miss Harriman’s
reply gave him another start.
“The other Miller girl,” she said in her high, strong voice which
fortunately lost its nasal twang when she sang. “Rusty has gone to
college, you know, even though she didn’t get the Wadsworth prize. But
this girl goes to the academy and it seems to me that Miss Penny ought
to have more help than she can give her outside of school hours, for
she has rheumatism so bad now that she’s almost a cripple.”
Glancing up, the speaker saw that the minister was upon them and
smilingly apprised him of the obvious fact that Miss Garland had got
back. He shook hands with Miss Garland and with the other three,
questioned the former about her summer and declared that he should
call upon her next week for a fuller account. Then he turned to Miss
Merriman.
“What was that I overheard you saying, Miss Merriman?” he asked with
his slow smile. “Did I hear you speak of _the other_ Miller girl? And
does that mean Anna?”
“Yes, Mr. Langley, Anna Miller. But that is what everybody in the South
Hollow, and for that matter, in Farleigh, too, I guess, calls her. But
she was away so long that people forgot there was such a person--such
as knew of the family at all--and anyhow, she seems so different from
Rusty. Of course she’s pretty,--she looks for all the world like a
doll,--and everybody says she’s good-natured to a fault. And there’s
something droll about her. And yet----”
The expression of Mr. Langley’s face made her pause.
“Do you know, Miss Merriman,” he said whimsically but at the same time
rather wistfully, “at this moment it seems to me that to be supremely
good-natured and somewhat droll is a triumph in itself.”
He smiled and sighed.
“Nevertheless, life in the two villages will seem different without
Rusty,” he owned. “It will be quieter, but doubtless far less exciting.”
He went into the church to fetch a book, then overtook Miss Garland and
walked with her as far as the post office. And as they went, he asked
her why she thought of Miss Penny as old; and they occupied the time
recollecting dates and computing the passing of the years. And both
felt older at parting, and one of them strangely depressed.
Just as Miss Penny had long realised that people called her an old lady
so Anna Miller was quite aware that she was known as the ‘other Miller
girl.’ But the younger resented the fact as little as the older. Anna
adored her sister, looked up to her in many ways, and never dreamed of
disputing or questioning her title as virtual head of the family. The
girl knew, too, that she was pretty and in doll-fashion, though she
didn’t herself consider doll-fashion bad. If the question had come up,
she would have acknowledged promptly, too, that she was good-humored,
and she couldn’t help realising that people thought her droll.
Nevertheless, vain as she undoubtedly was, Anna Miller did not attach
undue weight to any of these qualities, and otherwise would have been
likely to rate her own powers lower than anyone else would have done.
Enjoying life thoroughly, and perhaps more consciously than is usual at
her years, she was quite content to be the ‘other Miller girl’ and to
endeavor to stop any portion she might of the gap left in hearts and
households by Rusty’s absence.
But the girl was herself quite unconscious and others quite unaware of
her most valuable characteristic. Young as she was, Anna Miller had one
quality seldom gained before middle age, and rare even then,--a truly
humourous outlook upon the world. The girl viewed life and her fellow
human beings almost in the detached manner of a philosopher, yet warmly
and sympathetically withal. She enjoyed oddities and idiosyncrasies
which annoyed or vexed others and made allowance for larger faults with
a singularly mature tolerance. She was one of the few who habitually
demand less than they are willing to proffer,--simply and naturally and
quite without any sense of superiority.
Experience had made Anna Miller prematurely middle-aged in her grasp
of reality,--experience acting upon that endowment of good nature
which everyone granted her. Running away as a child from the dreary,
shiftless household that had been her home, for five years the girl
had supported herself in the great city to which she had fled, to the
extent of keeping soul and body together, successively as errand girl
to a dressmaker, as bundle and cash-girl, and finally as sales-girl in
a department store. But all the while something within her--perhaps
the adventurous instinct that had hurtled her forth--had responded to
the clarion which is within the din of every struggle. She had known
the extremes of heat and cold, of loneliness and hunger, but she had
made light of them. She had clung to her shred of vanity, masquerading
on an empty stomach, and cheering long hours in her cramped, dreary
hall-bedroom arranging her tangle of pale yellow hair in various
fashions before her tiny cracked mirror, trying on scraps of finery,
and coquetting with the reflection which was always picturesque no
matter how absurdly arrayed. She had ‘bluffed’ her way through the
lean, meagre years, her shockingly slangy expression being a veritable
gospel of cheer to her fellow clerks and lodgers, and the snatches of
ugly popular songs on her lips, real melody which echoed in her own
heart as well as in theirs. And she had ‘won out’ triumphantly with her
natural sweetness of disposition not only unimpaired but strengthened
and enriched, with a keenness of mind which is one of the ends of
education, and with that curiously mature and humourous outlook instead
of the bitterness which might have been expected.
On the day following that on which Mr. Langley had first heard her
referred to as the other Miller girl, Anna was in her usual place in
Miss Penny’s pew at the opening of the Sunday morning service. She
was rather preoccupied by her new suit. Rusty had had to have a new
one when she went to college, and she had insisted upon Anna’s having
one at the same time. Rusty’s was brown, the peculiar russet shade
that matched her hair exactly and was peculiarly Rusty’s, loose in the
jacket, and plain. Anna’s was green, more elaborate than Rusty’s and
not in nearly so good taste, as Anna knew well. But it was exceedingly
smart and very becoming and the girl was, as she declared, ‘crazy over
it.’ Clever with her fingers, she had made a green velvet hat to match
the suit, a three-cornered affair which did not fall far short of being
utterly absurd, but which, set jauntily upon her riotous yellow hair,
certainly made her little doll-face bewitching.
Anna had a very sweet voice and had been asked to join the choir,
and during the anthem, she fixed her long-lashed blue eyes seriously
upon the women members, studying, not their voices nor their manner
of using their vocal organs, but their attitude and demeanour. As she
saw herself in fancy standing behind the low railing in her new green
suit and ‘nifty’ hat, she wondered if it wouldn’t be an exceedingly
pleasant change for the congregation to have a younger person to gaze
upon and one who had more regard for the current fashions. And dear me!
Every blooming member of the present choir had hair of the same colour,
something between brown and drab. Anna said to herself that when she
should stand up among them to sing, if her long yellow braid with the
curl at the end did not of its own accord flop over her shoulder, she
would flop it,--it stood out so picturesquely against the green. Here
in the pew, of course, it was just as well to let it hang down her
back, for Miss Penny sat very near the pulpit.
So near, indeed, that she was directly in front of Mr. Langley,--which
reflection induced another that when she should sit with the choir,
Mr. Langley couldn’t see her at all. That seemed a pity, and yet--Anna
wondered if he saw her now,--saw her, that is, not as a soul but as
a young girl in a new suit, with yellow hair shining like pale gold
against it. He might possibly notice the latter, for his beloved little
Ella May, who had died before the Millers had come to Farleigh, had had
long golden curls.
Suddenly the girl recalled her roving gaze. Mr. Langley was preaching,
and Anna hadn’t even heard the text! It was right down mean, she
said to herself, when anyone worked as hard as he did to write such
beautiful sermons for people not to listen to every single word. He
didn’t write absolutely new sermons, indeed, he had so many on hand
after preaching here for years and years and years; but they were new
to the greater part of the congregation and practically so to all of
them, for he worked over them, added new matter and quoted from new
poems whose authors had been at school or in their cradles when the
sermons were first composed. Moreover they were quite fresh to Anna.
Though her mental equipment was haphazard, Anna Miller had a certain
power of concentration. To-day, however, she had no sooner fixed her
eyes resolutely upon the minister than her thoughts began to wander
again. For it came to the girl suddenly and startlingly that Mr.
Langley was changed--yes, greatly changed. He looked tired, but it was
worse than that: he looked as if he had lost something. There seemed no
longer to be any _springiness_ about him. He was like a jack-in-the-box
that has been so mishandled that when you open the lid he doesn’t jump
out at you but only flaps feebly. Mr. Langley was too young to have his
springs go flat. He had only a few grey hairs. He was tall and slim and
straight and graceful and really much handsomer than that floor-walker
at Martin and Mason’s that had been so stuck on himself.
Glancing hurriedly back over his life as she knew it by hearsay, Anna
felt it to have been unusually placid and untroubled. Of course it had
been a terrible grief to him losing his little girl, that golden-haired
little Ella May who had gone about through the two villages scattering
sunshine. But that had happened years ago and he had seemed happy and
young until now. Then it came to her that this was, perhaps, Ella May’s
birthday. Perhaps he had it all to go through again every year as the
day came round?
Early in the afternoon, Anna appeared suddenly in the parlour, which
was seldom used excepting on Sunday, briskly polishing a goblet with a
cross-barred dish towel.
“O Miss Penny, tell me, when did Ella May die?” she asked. “Was it the
twenty-second day of September?”
“O no, Anna, she died on the twenty-eighth day of December,” Miss Penny
returned promptly and in some surprise. And although the storms of more
than a score of winters had yellowed the tiny marble lamb upon the
little grave in the cemetery on the hillside where the minister’s baby
had been laid, probably every adult person in the parish could have
given the date as readily.
Anna returned to the kitchen. Passing the mirror, she paused and gazed
at her own image. She shook her head ruefully. Even with her festive
blouse and smart skirt covered by her checked gingham overall, she was
a picture, and after all, her hair looked as pale golden against this
dull ground. Hastily gathering an handful of wet silver, she returned
to the parlour.
“She had golden curls, didn’t she, Miss Penny--little Ella May?” she
asked.
“Long, golden ringlets and deep blue eyes,” asseverated Miss Penny in
the tone she used only in speaking of the dead.
“Well, was her birthday in September?”
“Why Anna Miller! She was born on Christmas-day--O my dear child, it
must have been twenty-five years ago this next Christmas day, for I
was fifty myself at the time and I am seventy-five now. That was the
year I had my plum-coloured moreen--you remember the under side of the
cushion in grandma’s old chair up in Reuben’s room? Sarah Pettingill
made it, and I wore it to the Christmas tree for the first time and
word came while we were there that Mr. Langley had the finest gift in
the world--a little daughter. Some of the ladies wanted him to call her
Christmas and he said he’d like to have her named Carol, but she was
called for his wife after all. Her maiden name was May.”
Mrs. Langley was so little a personality in the mind of the girl that
it seemed incongruous in her to have had a maiden name. As she would
have asked a careless question in regard to her, however, she looked up
to see Miss Penny’s face drawn with dismay.
“Dear me, I know I am old, but I didn’t think I was losing my memory,”
Miss Penny cried. “It comes to me all of a sudden that I wore that
plum-coloured dress to the child’s funeral. I remember distinctly my
mother’s telling me that plum-colour was next door to purple and that
purple was light mourning and quite suitable for a young person’s
funeral.”
“But you could have worn it to both,” declared Anna. “You keep your
clothes so well that it probably looked new for the funeral.”
“But Anna, my aunt Penny died the February after that dress was made
and mother and I coloured it black for the funeral. And she died
twenty-five years ago the tenth of February.”
“Then it couldn’t be the Christmas that Ella May was born that you had
it, but the one before her death. I’m glad it wasn’t, for I don’t like
her to be so old.”
“But if the little thing wasn’t born that year, I’m sure I don’t know
when she _was_ born,” remarked Miss Penny plaintively.
“We’ll have to find out,” said Anna cheerfully. “Anyhow, I’m glad it
wasn’t the twenty-second of September. I got to thinking of it at
church and it sort of--got on my nerves.”
Returning to her work, she couldn’t get Mr. Langley and the mysterious,
lamentable alteration in him off her mind. Ella May might have nothing
to do with it--and then again she might. In any event, the first thing
to be done was to learn the age of the child at the time of her death.
She was just wondering whether she had time to go over to the cemetery
that afternoon, when Miss Penny called her. Going into the parlour, she
found Mrs. Phelps, their next-door neighbour.
“O Anna, what do you think?” cried Miss Penny in great excitement.
“Mrs. Phelps says that Ella May Langley was only three days old when
she died. She can prove it!”