Mr. Langley was nearer fifty than forty, though only by a little. He
was, in a way, ‘settled’ in his habits. He liked and affected, on all
days save the Sabbath, old clothes and old shoes, though both were
always scrupulously neat, and his shabbiness was never otherwise than
picturesque and attractive. Though he went about constantly among
his people, he led a lonely, pensive life in the big, empty, shabby
parsonage, almost as little aware, it would seem, of the existence of
his invalid wife as were his parishioners who practically thought of
him as a bachelor. And truly, since his wife had taken to her room
upwards of twenty years ago, and shut herself out from everyone, he had
been almost as literally widowed as if she, too, lay in the enclosure
marked by the little marble lamb in the cemetery on the hillside.
For all that, Russell Langley had still somehow kept intact through
all the years the heart of youth--almost of boyhood. Not that his
parishioners were aware of it, except indirectly. Most of them regarded
their beloved pastor and bore themselves towards him as if he had
something like three score years to his credit--or debit. The boys
and girls, it is true, the children and even the babies found him
singularly companionable,--but so did the very oldest. The greybeards
of the congregation and those who were contemporaries of Russell
Langley’s grandparents talked to him as they would have talked to the
latter had they been living and had their lines been cast in Farleigh
instead of in Albany, New York. His youthful appearance impressed
them only in the sense that he was a fine figure in the pulpit and a
graceful presiding officer in the town hall whenever the services of
such an one were required. His tall, slim, indolently erect figure was
attributed to the fact that he had played base-ball at college, and the
lack of lines in his face to freedom from family cares. For, when all
is said, an invalid wife whom a clergyman sees no more frequently than
an invalid parishioner and with whom he holds no conversation whatever
is scarcely to be classed among family cares.
It was only the other Miller girl who recognised the elusive quality
that made up a large part of the charm which everyone felt in the
man. Likewise when this quality had taken flight, temporarily or
irretrievably, it was Anna Miller who guessed the secret of its
loss. Everyone knew that the minister had never forgotten his little
daughter who had died. Ella May’s name was constantly upon his lips.
But Anna said to herself that the light of enthusiasm in his eye and
the buoyancy of his step had been largely due to the thought of a child
toddling or tripping along beside him.
Then suddenly he had lost her, had lost his child-companion and with
her the spirit of youth. Someone must have said to him--some _idiot_,
some _gump_, some _galoot_, the girl reflected indignantly--that
Ella May would have been--was it possible that she would have been
twenty-five if she had lived? Twenty-five! Poor Mr. Langley! He
couldn’t tote a person of twenty-five around with him leading her by
the hand. It must have been a terrible shock to him to reach out for
the golden-haired child and see a tall young lady with her hair put up
and a college education! No wonder that he had grown old overnight,
that his youth had fallen from him as if it had been something
material, a mantle of slippery silk that had dropped from his shoulders
at the loosing of a clasp.
Ah! but he should have it back. He should recapture it, the Reverend
Russell Langley should, before it was beyond recall. He would renew
his youth in the companionship of his youthful wife. Mrs. Langley
was nearly forty-five, but she wouldn’t look over thirty at the
most--probably not over twenty-five. And twenty-five in a wife is quite
another thing than in a daughter. It was work and care and fuss and
bother that made people grow old, and she hadn’t done a thing or had a
care for nearly twenty-five years. Mrs. Langley had, as it were, lain
upon rose leaves, gazed at the little pictured lamb (that was, alas!
so much fairer than the marble image) and thought of all sorts of
sweet and lovely things. She had suffered pain, of course, but that is
refining and would only add a pensive, perhaps mournful charm to her
flower-like beauty.
A week from the day of her visit to the minister’s lot in the cemetery,
Mr. Langley passed the Miller house, bound for a conference at the
academy, and the other Miller girl set forth for Farleigh, of which
village the South Hollow was one end. As she drew near the parsonage,
she saw a blue haze of smoke coming from the chimney of the summer
kitchen. That meant that Big Bell was at work in that remote part of
the house, and Anna’s feet flew.
As she came to a lane which extended a few rods from the avenue which
was the main street of the village to a pine grove which was originally
the western boundary of a large farm, she glanced up absently. The
one house in the lane had been vacant during the summer, but within a
few weeks a mother and daughter, a rather mysterious pair, had moved
into it. Now she saw a young girl, who was dark and looked handsome in
an haughty fashion, on the steps. Anna waved her hand in a friendly
way. The girl inclined her small head proudly, rose and went into the
cottage.
“I do believe she’s mad because I haven’t been in to see her,” Anna
said to herself in dismay. “She’s about my age and I’m the one who
would naturally do it. Of course, they wouldn’t let Mr. Langley in, but
I’m different. Nobody would mind a little thing like me.”
She was tempted to run up the lane and tap at the door. But this
afternoon was pledged to Mr. Langley and his girl-wife, and Anna
regretfully left the lane behind her.
She opened the parsonage gate softly. If she could elude Bell the way
was clear, for the front door stood open, and of course the screen door
wouldn’t be fastened. Creeping up the walk, she tried it gently. It did
not yield. Peeping in, she could just make out that it was hooked.
As she stood irresolute, she noticed a loose place where the wire
netting was tacked to the wooden frame of door. It was too late for
June-bugs, but the season was still like summer and if there were any
chance, moth millers would fly in by the score as soon as the lamps
were lighted and commit suicide in their harrowing way. Poor things! It
seemed wicked to entice them to destruction.
But there was no other way. Boldly the girl poked her finger through
the aperture, tearing the netting ruthlessly until she could reach the
hook and raise it. Then, withdrawing her scratched and bleeding hand,
she opened the door softly and stole in, only to be immediately seized
and oppressed by a sensation of guilt and even of fright. Pausing only
a moment, however, she made her way noiselessly down the passage to the
door of the room she knew to be that of the minister’s wife. It was
ajar and she knocked timidly.
Absolute silence save for the loud ticking of the clock and the yet
louder beating of her heart. Screwing her courage, Anna knocked again.
“Bell?” called out a strange, hoarse voice that accorded ill with the
vision of the girl-wife.
“No’m. It’s me--Anna. It’s the other Miller girl--Rusty’s sister, you
know,” murmured Anna faintly. “Please may I come in? I want to--tell
you something.”
Without waiting for an answer, she pushed the door wide and entered a
large, bare, gloomy looking chamber, darkened and musty-smelling though
one window was open a few inches. For a minute she stood motionless,
unable to make out anything clearly in the dimness. Then, as suddenly
as if a blind had been raised or a match struck she saw the dark figure
of the minister’s wife dimly silhouetted against the dun background.
Mrs. Langley--if indeed it were Mrs. Langley?--had raised herself from
the cushions of a padded arm chair and was staring at the intruder in
mingled amazement and horror. And the girl, her heart in her mouth,
stood as if transfixed and stared back. It was as if she had heard a
tremendous explosion or witnessed a silent one (as one does in a dream)
and found herself standing in the midst of a mass of wreckage--which
might have been the shattered fragments of the bottle of cologne-water
with which she had in fancy bathed the white brow of the pale, romantic
invalid she had pictured.
[Illustration: “Please, may I come in? I want to--tell you something.”]
This woman’s figure, outlined against the lowered blind, was that of
a witch, the shoulders being curved almost in an hump and the emaciated
profile resembling the terrible nutcracker contour commonly associated
with the broomstick. Her dark hair, streaked with yellowish grey, was
strained back from her yellow face into a tight little wad on the back
of her head. Her lips were colourless, her cheeks appallingly hollow.
Her sunken eyes, set in deep, greenish cavities, burned fiercely
beneath her frowning brow. She looked as old and ugly as a sybil and to
Anna as wicked.
It was she who first recovered sufficiently to speak.
“Who are you and WHAT are you doing in my room?” she demanded in a
voice that made the girl say to herself ‘Hark from the tomb!’ and gain
thereby a bit of audacity.
“I’m the other Miller girl, Rusty’s sister,” she faltered. “I just
thought--I’d come----”
But she could not go on.
“Are you mad? Are you stark, staring crazy?” challenged the old woman
whom Anna couldn’t believe to be the minister’s wife. As she spoke,
large gaps on either side of her front teeth explained the unnatural
hollows in her cheeks.
“N-no, I guess not. I’m only--sort of _fresh_,” the girl gasped.
“Did Bell let you in?”--still more fiercely.
“O no, I let myself in,” Anna returned, and as the fierce dark eyes
bored into her she seemed forced to confess the whole enormity of her
action as if she had been a naughty child. “I poked my finger in and
made a hole in the screen, but I don’t believe it’ll matter--it’s so
late,--the season, I mean.”
“If you are not crazy, what do you mean by breaking into people’s
houses and disturbing the sick?” demanded the old woman. “Don’t you
know that I haven’t seen anyone except the doctor for twenty-three
years?”
“Twenty-three--that’s _skidoo_,” murmured Anna under her breath and
caught another bit of spirit. Withdrawing her gaze, not without
difficulty, from the face before her, she glanced about her, half
fearfully, half boldly. A marble-topped table next the chair in which
the invalid huddled was covered with bottles, apothecaries’ boxes
and medicine glasses. In their midst, a photograph in a velvet frame
stood upright by means of a support at the back. As the girl’s eye
encountered this, on a sudden she knew it was the little lamb, and her
fear took wings. Quite bold now, she went straight up to Mrs. Langley,
held out her hand--which was ignored--and smiled ingratiatingly.
“The little marble lamb up in the cemetery,” she murmured softly, “I
went to see it. I thought you would like to know--that is, I thought
you would want to know that it’s all turned black and yellow and
mildewed, and----”
“What!” the woman almost shrieked.
“The little lamb--the cunning little marble lamb on Ella May’s grave
with its little legs tucked under it like a baby kitten,--it’s all
black and--slimy!”
Mrs. Langley fell back among the cushions.
“My baby! My baby!” she cried, and the genuine pain in the harsh voice
awaked the girl’s pity. “Has no one looked after it? O, I might have
known! I might have known!”
As she looked beseechingly at Anna, she seemed to see her for the first
time.
“Sit down, little girl,” she said, and her voice though not pleasant
was less harsh.
Pity contending with shrinking, Anna fetched a chair and seated herself
beside the table bearing the bottles and the photograph. As she fixed
her eyes on the latter, the woman in the chair gazed at her. She had
had no glimpse of youth, of young life, for more than twenty years,
and it might not have been strange if this slip of a girl with her
long-lashed demure blue eyes, her charming, peaked little face and her
riotous yellow hair that almost seemed to light up the dark chamber,
had appeared a supernatural visitant. She made an apparent effort to
collect herself, to marshal forces that had been dormant for so many
years as almost to have become non-existent.
“It was--good of you to tell me,” she croaked. “Is it--ruined?”
“O no, indeed, one side of it is as good as ever, or nearly. A marble
man could mend it up slick, I’m sure. But Mrs. Phelps’ cousin Alfred
isn’t Charley-on-the-spot any longer because he cashed in right after
he made it.”
The invalid grasped only the first sentence. “I should hate to have
it--scraped,” she said in a low voice.
“I get you. So should I,” the girl responded eagerly. “Of course you
know that it isn’t alive, but you can’t help feeling all the time just
as if it were--those darling little sticks of legs tucked in under so
naturally and all that. I shouldn’t want it scraped, either. Promise
not to let on if I tell you something?”
The invalid looked as if she would have smiled if she hadn’t long since
forgotten how.
“I promise,” she said in a voice which indicated the weary while since
she had relaxed her terrible grimness.
“Well, when I saw it, so little and cunning and helpless, and then
saw--what had happened to it, out there all alone, I just cried. I
couldn’t help it, honestly.”
As she looked at the girl, tears came to the invalid’s eyes. The hand
which held her pocket handkerchief to them was like a yellow claw, but
they were less sharp when she removed it.
“O, don’t you feel badly about it, please, please,” Anna begged. “I’ll
tell you what--I’ll clean it all up slick. I can use sand soap and all
sorts of lightning cleaners. I’ll get someone to put me wise about
cleaning marble without letting on what it’s for.”
“O, if you only would!” cried the invalid looking and speaking more
like Red-Riding-Hood’s wolf than like the girl-wife Anna had dreamed of
restoring to her husband (who might be this woman’s son or grandson).
“I hope--I didn’t frighten you?”
“I was a bit fazed, but I shouldn’t be again,” Anna admitted as she
rose. Then she caught her breath sharply at the thought of there being
an _again_. And after all, why should there be? Though she couldn’t
help being sorry for her, there was nothing she could do with that sort
of person. Surely she couldn’t wish that sort of wife upon poor Mr.
Langley!
“And you will tell me how you get along?” the other asked.
“Come here, you mean?”
“Of course,” Mrs. Langley responded so promptly that Anna couldn’t
help feeling how elated she must have been if the invalid had been the
invalid of her fancy. She felt a bit indignant as she asked herself
why, with absolutely nothing to do for twenty years and no real
illness, this woman couldn’t at least have kept her figure and her
complexion. “How soon can you do it, little girl?” Mrs. Langley added.
“Not before next Saturday, for I’m in school--the academy. So you see
I’m not what you’d call a little girl. Well--so long.”
She held out her hand. The hand of the invalid was cold and clammy,
besides being like a claw, and as she let herself out, on a sudden Anna
shivered. The yellow face with its cavernous eyes, the sunken mouth,
the gaping teeth, the claw-like grasp of her hand,--the girl made
a wild dash to get away from it all only to ran violently into Mr.
Langley, who was coming slowly up the walk with bent head.
Apologising in profound distress, as if it had been his fault, he asked
Anna if she had been looking for him, that being the sole reason that
anyone but the doctor ever came to the parsonage.
“No, sir,” faltered the girl oppressed by a sudden and awful sense of
guilt towards him, “I came to see--your wife.”
“What’s that, Anna?” he demanded looking at her as if he doubted her
sanity or his own sense of hearing.
“I’ve been--visiting with your wife,” the girl said and laughed
hysterically.
With a startled face, he pushed by her into the house. And only then
Anna realised the whole force of the situation, the ugly, naked fact.
She--that terrible old woman who was really an old hag, was Mr.
Langley’s wife!
She began to run, wildly, blindly, pursued by the terrible vision. She
did not see the girl who lived in the lane come forth into the avenue
on an errand, and ran directly into her arms.