Anna Miller gasped. But she recovered herself immediately.
“Well then, you were right about the plum-coloured moreen, Miss Penny.
It served for the christening and the funeral just like the baked
meats in _Hamlet_ that coldly furnished forth the wedding-feast,”
she commented. “Only--this is what gets me. How about those golden
ringlets?”
“Dear me, dear me! I cannot understand!” cried Miss Penny in dismay.
“Even now I seem to see that little thing as plain as day, toddling
along beside Mr. Langley, in her fine white dress with the lace frill
at the neck pressed down by those lovely long curls. I suppose I
dreamed it.”
“The fact is, Miss Penny, most everybody in the church feels just about
so,” remarked her neighbour.
She turned to Anna. “As I said to Miss Penny, the reason I am so sure
about it all is because the marble lamb on their lot in the cemetery
on Ella May’s grave was the last thing my cousin Alfred ever did. Mrs.
Langley was so particular that it should be copied from life from a
lamb that was just three days old same as the baby was when she passed
away that Albert had to wait until spring to do it. He went off on a
farm up in the hills beyond Marsden and stayed over two nights to make
his sketches. He took to his bed that spring and never did another
stroke of marble work. Mrs. Langley was more than satisfied with the
monument and had it photographed and framed. The last I heard--which
wasn’t very lately--the photograph stood on the marble-topped stand in
her room close to her bed.”
Anna’s eyes grew round. It seemed strange to hear Mrs. Phelps speak of
Mrs. Langley as a person. Until to-day she had been hardly so much as
a dim vision, a mere word, this woman who had been an invalid for more
years than Anna had lived. She seemed far less a person than Ella May.
And now to think of her--or to try to stretch her mind to think of her
as Ella May’s mother and Mr. Langley’s wife gave the girl an uncanny
feeling. And she couldn’t mention her in the present tense.
“What was she like, Mrs. Phelps?” she asked in an hushed manner.
“Mrs. Langley? O Anna, don’t ask me!” protested Mrs. Phelps. “She was
pretty with soft dark eyes and fine brown hair the last time I saw her,
but that was twenty-odd years ago.”
“My goodness! Hasn’t anyone seen her since?” asked Anna.
“It has been years and years, I don’t know just how many, since the
last outsider saw her. She had neuralagy in her face and headache.
The last I knew she had had one headache for ten years. I don’t know
whether that one is still going on or whether she had begun on another.”
“I wonder if Mr. Langley sees her?” Anna asked.
“I believe he goes in once a day--he used to. But Bell Adams that keeps
house for him takes care of Mrs. Langley and I guess she’s the only one
that ever really sees her.”
Anna betook herself to the porch. Understanding had come to her. Poor
Mr. Langley! He, too, had played with the vision of the golden-haired
little daughter; all these years he had kept himself young with the
image of his little girl in his heart. Most likely he hadn’t thought
of her as of any particular age--just a darling little girl. But now,
since last Sunday,--since Wednesday, indeed, some idiot had reminded
him that she would have been a grown-up young lady at this time.
Anna could fairly see him shrinking, cowering before the appalling
fact. Then he had taken a great leap headlong to overtake a daughter
twenty-five years old!
What a pity! What a calamity, indeed! How would he ever get through
the remainder of his life with his poor heart all flattened out and
his vision forever shattered? But no one could bring the baby back nor
could anyone halt or turn back the revolving years. Everything moved
relentlessly on towards old age excepting that little marble lamb that
would remain just three days old to the end of time.
But the marble lamb recalled Mrs. Langley, and suddenly Anna seemed to
see a ray of light. Mrs. Langley had been dead to the minister almost
as long as the baby, and yet she wasn’t hopelessly dead. Suppose she
were to be restored to him? There must have been something very dear
about one who had insisted upon the little symbolic image’s being
copied from a baby lamb just three days old, and if she still kept the
photograph beside her in her loneliness and pain, she must herself be
a lovely creature with the added saintliness of the years of patient
suffering. If she could be restored to Mr. Langley, a sweet girl-wife,
would not the weight of years that had suddenly pounced down upon him
take instant flight? One was always hearing of people who had been
bed-ridden for years getting well, and Mrs. Langley wasn’t so bad as
bed-ridden. ‘Neuralagy’ and sleeplessness and headache and the like
were what ailed her, and youth saw no reason why these should not be
speedily banished. Quite likely it might have been put through long
since had anyone taken the matter in hand.
Anna grinned as she said to herself she would now be Charley
on-the-spot. Mr. Langley had been goodness itself to Rusty and their
father--to all the family, indeed. He was putting Rusty through
college. Her mother and the boys worshipped him; and Anna herself
really owed him most of all. For she had deserted her family for five
years, coming back to find a quite different and to her ideal home, a
changed father and mother and a wonderful sister--and all through Mr.
Langley. In any case, Anna said to herself she would have wanted to do
what she was going to do (she didn’t know how or even exactly _what_
as yet); but as it was, she simply _had_ to do it.
That evening when she and Miss Penny were having their tea, Miss Penny
asked her how she happened to be thinking of Ella May that day.
“I noticed that Mr. Langley looked sort of sad this morning at church,
and I was trying to scare up a reason,” Anna returned.
“Sad!” cried Miss Penny in real distress. “O Anna!”
“Well, tired, perhaps,” the girl amended.
“Do you suppose, Anna, that it can be because of his lifting me
in and out of the phaeton every Sunday?” Miss Penny asked almost
tragically. “If I thought it was that, I wouldn’t go to meeting at
all--though I should miss it--I don’t know how I should get along
without it. And then he might be hurt. Or--I suppose I could get that
Luke Thompson--not his brother, you know--to help me. He isn’t very
bright, and yet--I hardly know whether I could offer him money. And yet
how could I ask him unless I did? And I should have to explain to Mr.
Langley--but so I should if I stayed at home. Only----”
“I could lift you myself. I could run three times round the house
with you in my arms,” Anna assured her. “It’s nothing at all to Mr.
Langley. He’s got muscle to burn. I didn’t mean that. I meant--I
don’t know exactly, but I believe he’s tired at heart after all these
years of well-doing. I’ll tell you what his expression this morning
makes me think of--pa’s Aunt Marthy he’s always telling of who was
taken with her last sickness in the dead of winter and had a terrible
hankering for dandelion greens. She said she knew she’d get well if
she could have just one mess of ’em--and the snow three feet deep on
the ground. And when it came to the end and they asked her if she had
any last wishes, she said: ‘Thank you kindly, I could relish a mess of
dandelions.’ And while she was waiting for them, she died.”
“We’re all more or less like that, wanting something or other beyond
our reach,” commented Miss Penny with a smile and a sigh, “But I
shouldn’t think it of Mr. Langley.”
“Do you know, Miss Penny, I believe I’ll run in to see Mrs. Langley
some day soon,” Anna remarked.
Miss Penny looked as if she believed Anna had suddenly gone mad.
“She might take to me where she didn’t to other people--some do, you
know,” the girl went on coolly. “And some people like just to look
at me--on account of my hair, I dare say, for otherwise I’m not much
to look at. It’s a yard long, you know, if I pull it out perfectly
straight.”
“Anna, dear, there are moments when I almost think you are vain,” said
Miss Penny smiling. “But listen to me, child. Reuben stayed at the
parsonage for weeks after his father passed away, and Mrs. Langley
would never see him even once. And he was the sweetest little fellow!
Mr. Langley would have liked to keep him, but of course he couldn’t
under the circumstances. And so--you know how it all came about that
he came here, don’t you, Anna?”
“I have heard it many a time. It’s one of pa’s favourite yarn. But it’s
a good story and worth repeating just the same,” Anna returned.
The girl’s last waking thought was of standing by the invalid’s couch
bathing her aching brow with cologne-water. But in the course of
the following week she learned that Mrs. Langley had acquired the
reputation of being extremely formidable. Big Bell, as Bell Adams,
the tall, large-boned, hard-featured but good-natured housekeeper was
called, cherished considerable affection for her mistress but gave Anna
no encouragement whatever. When she hinted that it might be well for
her to see someone, Bell was horrified and aghast. It was as much as
ever, she declared, that Mrs. Langley would see her own husband for two
minutes a day.
Admitting that visiting Mrs. Langley would be no _cinch_, the girl was
nevertheless undaunted. It wasn’t natural for her to live in that way.
If she weren’t lonely, she ought to be; if she were not wretched, it
was because there were no extremes in her life--only one dead level
of headache and _neuralagy_. And constantly Anna came back to the
realisation that there was something to appeal to in a woman who had
thought of having the three days old lamb carved and who had cherished
the picture of it all these years.
Finally she decided to see the image itself and receive, it might be,
some inspiration or suggestion for making a beginning. She learned
the location of the minister’s lot and set off secretly early Saturday
afternoon.
The cemetery, which overlooked the whole valley of the river, was a
retired, lonely place, hedged in by evergreen, yet not without beauty.
Anna had been vaguely perplexed and anxious, but the serenity of the
place soothed her, and she made straight for the minister’s lot with a
subdued eagerness of expectation that was almost adventurous.
Suddenly she saw it from a distance, the tiny baby lamb with its feet
folded neatly beneath it. So little and quaint and homely it was, that
the girl stilled a cry, a little motherly murmur of pity, as if the
tiny creature were alive and had been left here lonely through all the
long years. And running, she dropped down on her knees beside it to
fondle it.
Then she shrank back and caught her breath sharply, almost in a sob. It
was as if, believing it to be alive, she had found it dead. One side of
the marble was sadly discoloured. It was so blackened indeed as to be
quite defaced and ugly, to have lost all its symbolism and significance
and to have become an hideous caricature. Suddenly the other Miller
girl, who seldom shed tears, covered her face and wept.