Reuben Cartwright’s father had built the house in the lane at Farleigh,
and one who had known Dick Cartwright well would have said the cottage
was like him. There was something odd and unusual about it which
gave it a peculiar charm without making it startling or bizarre; and
something of his whimsicality seemed to have crept into the arrangement
of nooks and corners and cupboards and bookcases. Oddest of all was
the living-room, which was disproportionately large and contained a
good-sized platform, raised three feet or more above the floor, which
was to have held the pipe organ which the years were to have brought.
But the years, instead of bringing the pipe organ, fame and other
desiderata, material and otherwise, had taken away from Dick Cartwright
his greatest blessing, his wife and sweet-heart whose presence and
companionship had been the necessary conditions of fulfilling and
enjoying his dreams. And after her death, the quaint cottage with the
platform for the organ and the odd bits of furniture he had made and
carved were only a mockery to Dick Cartwright. He had his little boy,
it is true, who was very like his mother, and he had Mr. Langley as
an intimate friend; but he could not forget Jessie and he took to
drink to ease the torture remembrance was. Whereupon he forgot not
only Jessie but their child and his duty as well. He lost his place as
organist at Farleigh church and as book-keeper at one of the banks at
Wenham. And when presently, three years after the death of his wife, he
disappeared, it was found that he had lost his house also and all his
possessions.
When news of his death in a railway wreck near Chicago came to Mr.
Langley, who had meanwhile sheltered Reuben, he made enquiries and
found that the cottage had been mortgaged to its full value. The
bank at Wenham which held the mortgage offered the cottage for sale,
then, when no purchaser appeared, for rent. Soon after, an elderly
couple whose married daughter lived in the South Hollow took it and
occupied it for six years until early in the preceding summer when
their daughter had been widowed and they had gone to live with her. The
cottage stood idle all summer but early in September a new family moved
in, a mother and daughter, the first strangers to come to the village
for years. No one knew whence they came nor who they were. They moved
in so quietly that scarcely anyone knew the house was occupied until
they saw smoke coming from the squat, picturesque chimney.
No one had seen the mother; but the daughter, who had answered the door
or gone out on errands, was said to be as handsome as she was haughty.
They responded to no friendly overtures, refusing entrance even to Mr.
Langley, and seemed to feel themselves superior to the place and the
people and to the cottage where they lived which was, indeed, a simple
dwelling when compared with the simplest summer homes of the wealthy.
For they were said to have been enormously wealthy and suddenly to have
found themselves penniless at the death of the husband and father who
had gambled or speculated until he had come to his last farthing. It
was understood that they were relatives or connections of the president
of the bank at Wenham, who had offered them the shelter of the cottage
in the lane.
Anna Miller attributed their desire for seclusion to grief over the
death of the husband and father rather than to pride. She couldn’t
help fearing what had evidently occurred to none other that he might
have died by his own hand, and she felt that such a shock might well
leave them too sore and sick at heart to wish to see any human being.
Nevertheless she said to herself, with an assurance that was made up
of humility and warm-heartedness as well as of vanity, that she would
somehow effect an entrance where others failed.
When she ran straight into the strange girl’s arms on the day she was
fleeing from the parsonage and the spectre she had elicited, the one
shock counteracted the other. Controlling her hysterical shuddering,
she murmured an earnest apology.
“Dear me! I might have knocked you down, butting into you that way.
You are sure I didn’t hurt you?”
“Not at all,” the girl repeated quietly, and Anna liked her voice as
much as her dark, pretty face. “But what was it?” she asked. “Was
someone or something chasing you?”
Anna smiled rather wanly as she moved back to get the support of the
stone wall which fenced the lane. “Not exactly, unless it was a ghost,”
she said in her usual droll way. “Sit down here, won’t you, and I’ll
tell you about it.”
“I mustn’t stop,” the girl said nervously. “I only thought--you needed
help.”
“So I do, the worst way. Honest, I’m like a rag. My knees shake and----”
The stranger sat down on the wall beside her and put her arm about
her shelteringly. Anna leaned against her gratefully and closed her
eyes for a few moments. The older girl gazed at her wonderingly. An
hungry, almost a starved look came into the dark eyes and the arm which
supported Anna clasped her almost fiercely.
Anna opened her eyes and smiled without moving.
“You’ll think I’m a perfect baby,” she declared, “but truly I have had
a queer sort of shock.”
She sat erect and slipped down, then seated herself again. “I’m too
wobbly to walk just yet. I’ll wait a bit until I feel better or see a
waggon. I wish you felt like waiting with me?”
The other girl’s brow puckered in a slight frown. Anna introduced
herself.
“I am Anna Miller. I have wanted awfully to get acquainted with you,
though truly I didn’t mean to break in the way I did.”
The dark girl smiled vaguely and rose slowly from the wall. Anna sprang
up also.
“You mind--waiting alone?” the stranger asked hesitatingly.
“I’m not afraid, only I don’t seem to feel like facing my thoughts at
this moment. I guess I’ll hike along if you’re leaving me.”
As she breathed a deep sigh, the dark girl looked at her in troubled
fashion.
“Come up to our cottage and have a cup of tea first,” she asked in a
constrained manner. Anna said afterwards to Miss Penny that if she had
talked Latin she would have used the form of interrogation that expects
the answer no.
“I’d like to, first rate, if it wouldn’t be too much bother for you,”
she said frankly. And when the other assured her that it would be no
trouble, she put her hand on her arm and they went up the lane together.
The outer door led straight into the living-room. As they entered, a
tall, handsome, dark-eyed woman with a proud, forbidding countenance
rose from a chair and confronted them.
“Mother, this is Miss Miller,” the girl said deprecatingly. “She
doesn’t feel well--she’s faint and I want to make her a cup of tea.”
“Not Miss Miller,--Anna, please. No one calls me anything else,” the
girl asked in her sweet young voice. But the woman, who bowed stiffly
without extending her hand, asked Miss Miller stiffly to be seated.
Anna dropped limply into a chair. The other girl went out of the room.
“I--I didn’t catch your name,” murmured Anna.
“Lorraine,” said the woman coldly and yet with a certain fierce warmth.
“Somehow that name sounds very familiar to me,” Anna observed, only to
perceive by the woman’s face that she had made an extremely mal àpropos
remark. “I suppose it’s the city--or province in France I am thinking
of,” she added lamely.
“Quite likely,” returned Mrs. Lorraine frigidly, and taking up a piece
of embroidery began sternly to set fine stitches in it. Anna glanced at
her timidly.
“How pretty your fancy-work is,” she remarked, politely deprecatory.
She told Miss Penny afterwards that she wondered the stuff weren’t all
eyelet-holes, for Mrs. Lorraine’s eyes, black as they were, reminded
her of burning coals. And she declared that hereafter she would believe
in the tamarisk or basilisk or whatever the bird was whose gaze turned
one to stone.
“It could hardly be called fancy-work,” Mrs. Lorraine rejoined, and her
voice was the more cutting in that it was naturally good and had the
modulations of one who has lived among educated people in society. “I
make my living and that of my daughter--or try to--doing this work.”
Anna felt she should have run from this house also had not the daughter
appeared at this moment with a tray containing a cup of tea and a plate
of biscuit. She took it gratefully and in her nervousness scalded her
throat so that tears came to her eyes. It would have been easy to burst
into tears, and the girl resolutely studied the pattern of the napkin.
So doing, she noticed that it was of the finest damask she had ever
seen but was apparently old for it was darned and patched. Somehow,
she had never heard of patching napkins. But she felt Mrs. Lorraine’s
piercing eyes upon her and transferred her attention to the silver
spoon which was also old, very thin and exceedingly fine.
“They were my grandmother’s, and I kept the dozen. They were too thin
and worn to be worth anything,” Mrs. Lorraine declared in the manner of
challenge. And Anna felt that she could endure no longer. Gulping down
the tea, she rose to her feet.
“I must be going,” she said and turning to the daughter thanked her for
the refreshment.
“I feel so much better,” she said. “I----”
Pausing, she gazed wistfully at the girl who seemed sweeter and gentler
in contrast with her mother’s haughtiness, and to whom Anna’s heart
went out warmly. It seemed as if she couldn’t leave her without pledge
of another meeting. But when she asked if she might call for her on the
morrow to go to church, Mrs. Lorraine said that she and her daughter
did not go out.
“Just the same, I am sure there were tears in that sweet girl’s eyes,”
Anna told Miss Penny that evening. “She is all ready to be friendly,
but what can she do with that terrible old woman. And yet--I’m sorry
for her, too, poor thing!”
“I suppose she doesn’t like to appear out after being so rich, though
they must have some of their fine clothes left,” returned Miss Penny.
“But it may be their carriage, you know, though for that matter I don’t
know why even people with a coachman and footmen should care to drive
to church when it’s only across the way--that is, it’s cross-wise from
the parsonage and there’s only one house between the parsonage and the
lane, and Reuben’s father didn’t have to start until the last minute,
though he was always there, of course, to begin to play before the
opening of service. And there’s no barn for the carriage and where
would they put the coachman?”
“They could make a nice little coop for him by putting hinges on the
floor of the pipe organ platform and making a lid of it,” remarked Anna
lightly. She had decided on the way home that she would not mention
her visit to the parsonage to anyone. She would fulfill her promise,
clean the little marble lamb and then forget all about it and about
Mrs. Langley and go back to thinking of Mr. Langley as if he were a
bachelor. She would make no further ill-advised efforts to bring back
his youthfulness; she would be thankful if she hadn’t added ten years
to his age. If he didn’t appear to-morrow in the pulpit with snow-white
hair she would thank her lucky stars and never meddle with his affairs
again.
“I forgot there’s a shop on the place,--it went with the old house
that was torn down,” Miss Penny remarked and went on to try to fit
the coachman and at least one footman in there, though she could not
recollect whether there was a second story or loft or not. And Anna
listened absently and thought of Mrs. Langley.
Fortunately the third Saturday was also fair. Anna set out early with a
basket that might have been intended for autumn wild flowers but really
contained cloths, a cake of sand soap, a bottle of ammonia and a tiny
vial containing acid. As she followed the winding foot-path leading up
the hill, and all the while she was working on the stone with patient
skilful fingers, she seemed to hear over and over in her mind, she
seemed to scrub to the rhythm of the warning _Let sleeping dogs lie,
Let sleeping dogs lie_. Mr. Langley wouldn’t have thanked her for
arousing that old woman to life,--but fortunately she _hadn’t_ done any
such thing. It was only temporary--a flare-up of interest that would
die down as soon as she should be satisfied concerning the stone. She
would report her success--for she was succeeding--on her way home and
would thereafter leave her in the condition in which she had found her
and wherein she seemed perfectly content.
When she had done, the little image was so white and sweet and
appealing that Anna was loth to leave it. And when she bent to kiss the
meek little head in long farewell she couldn’t help thinking pityingly
of Mrs. Langley. Poor thing! Poor forlorn creature! If only someone
had gotten at her earlier before she had become a petrified mummy! It
was too late now, but Anna wished with all her heart she could see the
little lamb in its new freshness. She was sorry for her, more than
sorry. Nevertheless as she descended the hill the girl simply could
not face the thought of that darkened, musty room with the wild eyes
glaring through the dimness. She decided to write a note and took a
bypath which avoided the parsonage.
That night she wrote a note which her brother Frank delivered after
Sunday school next day:
“DEAR MRS. LANGLEY, the little lamb is white as snow again, a perfect
darling,--_fleckless_ as the books would say. I had to kiss its
little head when I had finished, it was such a cutey. As I ought
really to be studying up to my ears to keep up with the little
cash-girls of the ABC class, I will send this note by my brother
instead of disturbing you. I will keep my eye on the image from this
time on.
Yours faithfully,
ANNA.”
As she finished the letter, Mrs. Phelps came in. Anna knew by her face
that she had some exciting or shocking bit of news to relate, and her
heart sank. Quite likely the report of her visit to the parsonage was
all over the place!
“Have you heard about the Lorraines?” she asked.
“The Lorraines?” repeated Anna.
“Yes, Anna. Do you happen to know where Mr. Lorraine is?” Mrs. Phelps
asked eagerly.
“In heaven I trust,” Anna murmured with charitable intent.
“Not at all and never will be unless he mends his ways. He’s behind
the bars. He is serving a sentence of ten years in prison for
embezzlement!” cried Mrs. Phelps almost triumphantly.