“O Anna,” cried her mother as soon as the girl had seated herself,
“have you heard about the people who have moved in where the Converses
moved out?”
“Why, Jenny, that’s the house where Reuben was born and brought
up,” observed Seth Miller. “It was before we knew Reuben or had any
suspicion there was such a person, and we get in the way of thinking
he always lived at Miss Penny’s; but I mistrust he had a good home and
indulgent parents until his ma died, and his pa, who was one of them
musical geniuses, took to drink.”
“Yes, ma, I heard about the Lorraines. Mrs. Phelps told Miss Penny last
night,” returned Anna who always spent Sunday afternoon at her own
home, which was diagonally across the way from Miss Penny’s. The girl
was pale to-day and leaned listlessly back in her chair in a way that
was foreign to her wonted lively self. Her mother had noticed in church
that Anna, who was always thin, had grown intensely so within the last
fortnight and had hastened to get the dinner dishes out of the way
before her daughter should rush in and take the task off her hands.
“It was all in the papers last spring,” said Miller. “They was
chock full of it for a spell, and the queer part of it was that
the denouncement of the hull thing came right at the same time Wat
Graham was arrested over at Wenham. If it hadn’t ’a been for Wat’s
brother-in-law, Mudge, going bail for him and helping settle with
the creditors, why Wat himself might ’a been in the cell next to Mr.
Lorraine.”
“Why, Pa Miller! Wat Graham’s in another class altogether,” protested
Anna.
“I know they called Lorraine an embezzler, but I supposed that was only
a polite name for thief,” her father rejoined. “Anyhow, it looked from
the papers and from what was said over to Spicer’s last night as if he
was a particularly mean kind of thief--sort of specialized on widders
and orphans, you might say.”
Anna uttered a little cry of protest. Mrs. Phelps had said that the
story was that Lorraine’s crookedness had involved thousands of small
investors who had lost their all through him. She had added that more
than one of those ruined thus had committed suicide. As Anna had lain
awake thinking of it, she had tried to convince herself that the latter
statement was false, and the rest exaggerated. She hadn’t succeeded,
but it was not until now that she realized that she had utterly failed.
Poor Miss Lorraine! And no wonder Mrs. Lorraine protected herself with
the bristles and spikes of a porcupine!
“Reuben will most likely feel cut up to have such people living in his
old house,” Mrs. Miller opined sadly.
“O ma, they can’t help it, and they aren’t that sort themselves at
all!” cried Anna.
“And my patience, Jenny, Reuben would be the last one in the world to
object to anybody because they was down; the quickest way to reach
Reuben’s heart is to be in trouble,” declared Seth Miller loyally. “He
started out as a little shaver by rescuing a poor, forlorn tramp cat,
and he’s been like a shepherd seeking for lost sheep ever since. By the
by, Anna, did I ever tell you that story--how Reuben clumb the highest
tree in the county and like as not in the state?”
“You certainly did, pa, the very day after I got back, and many’s the
time you have offered to tell it to me again,” retorted the girl. “Miss
Penny told me the same story the second time she laid eyes on me and
this very week she refreshed my memory with all the fine points of it.
But all the same, it’s a first rate yarn, and Reuben’s a brick.”
“That was the beginning of his going to Miss Penny’s,” Seth Miller went
on as if he could not leave the fascinating subject. Then suddenly he
opened his eyes wide to see Mr. Langley drive up to the gate.
As Mr. Langley stepped on the porch, Anna was seized with a sudden and
almost unaccountable sense of guilt. She felt as if she must make her
escape. But there was no stairway except that in the front passage,
and here was her mother beamingly ushering the minister in upon her.
But as she glanced up--even indeed, as she heard his step, the girl
was reassured. Somehow, it seemed as if Mr. Langley had recaptured
his springiness. He looked his old young self again, and as he took
her hand he smiled in a way that made her feel as if she had had a
benediction all to herself.
“O Anna, my dear child, Mrs. Langley wishes very much to see you,” he
said eagerly and with a certain largeness that would have been amusing
if it hadn’t been pathetic. For it seemed to indicate that he was the
bearer of a mandate from royalty.
“She expected you yesterday, it seems, and to-day she was so
disappointed to get a note instead of a call that I volunteered to come
up at once and fetch you.”
Thus far no one outside the parsonage had known of that audacious visit
of Anna’s. Seth Miller’s face wore an expression half-jaunty, half
proud. No man had such extraordinary daughters as he, and sometimes it
seemed as if Anna were quite as remarkable as Rusty. But Mrs. Miller
looked frightened.
Mr. Langley turned to her with his charming smile.
“What do you think, Mrs. Miller! This is the first time that Mrs.
Langley has felt any interest whatever in anyone or anything since we
lost our little Ella May,” he said in a sort of hushed wonderment. “You
will spare Anna for a little while, won’t you? I’ll bring her back
shortly safe and sound.”
When Anna returned to Miss Penny’s at tea time, she found her in a
state of almost wild excitement.
“O Anna, do sit down and tell me all about it,” she cried. “For the
first time in my life I was glad--no, I can’t say I was glad, but I
wasn’t really disappointed that Mr. Langley didn’t come in. Not that he
thinks it wrong, being Sunday, and anyhow I really am an old lady and
won’t be getting out to service many years more. But he had the Smith’s
horse, you know. It was nice of him to bring you home, but of course he
would. He thought you were here--that was why he stopped. And to think
of Mrs. Langley’s asking for you all of her own accord. Dear me, dear
me, what does she look like and did you have a nice time?”
“Not exactly what you would call slick,” replied Anna in her droll way
that cloaked her weariness even for herself. “There was nothing lively
enough about it to break the Sabbath. Our conversation was confined to
the subject of tombstones.”
“O Anna, my dear!” said Miss Penny in mild reproof as if it were
sacrilegious to speak lightly of such things.
Anna related briefly the occasion of her first visit and described the
restoration of the marble image in the cemetery.
“Bless its little heart!” cried Miss Penny who was as enthusiastic
as Anna in her love of animals. “It must be sweet. I wonder I never
thought of going to look at it on Memorial day. I used to go to the
cemetery regularly every year until I got so lame.”
“We’ll drive the pony up there some day. It’s not far to walk from the
gate,” Anna said.
She dropped into a rocking chair, let her yellow head fall wearily
back against the cushion and closed her eyes.
“I had to tell her of it over and over and over,” she said presently,
raising her lashes pensively.
“Anna, you are very tired!” cried Miss Penny.
“Only a wee bit and it isn’t exactly _tired_, then,” declared the
girl. “But you know how it is when you go into a painty room or pass
by that awful-smelling tannery place beyond Wenham? You don’t draw a
long breath all the while and yet you don’t realise that you’re holding
your breath. Well, there’s something about Mrs. Langley and her room
that makes you feel as if you were sitting on the edge of your chair
waiting until you can get out where you see sunshine and people that
talk and smile. Her eyes, you know, like coals of fire in the Bible,
and great hollows in her cheeks and a voice that seems to come from a
cave or a tomb. The blinds are drawn down almost to the window sills
and there are medicine bottles to burn. There’s air enough, I suppose,
but not the kind that’s sweetened by sunshine. It seems musty and makes
you feel as if there were spiders in all the dark corners--huge black
spiders with bodies big as this and crooked legs!”
“O Anna!”
“Sure thing! And what do you think? She wants me to come to see her
every Saturday,--every blooming Saturday afternoon, Miss Penny.”
“Anna dear, I wouldn’t do it. You really must not,” said Miss Penny
gravely. “It would be too great a strain upon you.”
Anna threw herself on the hassock at Miss Penny’s feet leaning her head
upon the knee that was not lame.
“Really, Miss Penny, I am glad to go again and every Saturday,” she
said softly. “Mr. Langley almost had tears in his eyes when he spoke of
it. I didn’t dare look at him again to make sure, because after I had
come out of that creepy place it wouldn’t have taken much to set me to
crying.”
“I understand,” murmured Miss Penny stroking the girl’s yellow hair.
“And to tell the truth, Anna, I almost envy you in being able to do
something for Mr. Langley. Ever since he came to be our preacher, I
have longed to do something for him to express my appreciation and
affection for him, but it always seems impossible. It has always been
the other way--his doing for me. And the best things in my life have
come to me through him, Reuben and Rusty and now you, Anna.”
“Miss Penny,” said Anna quickly, “you know he visits her every day. Do
you suppose he kisses her?”
“Dear me, Anna! what a question! I’m sure I have no idea. I suppose he
does.”
“But how can he! But you haven’t seen her as she is now, and you never
could imagine how she looks. He certainly seems to think a heap of
her all the same, and as he can see as well as I can in the dark, he
can’t help seeing that she looks old enough to be his great aunt. Well,
I’m sorry for her but I wouldn’t be related to her for a gold mine.
However, I can stand it once a week all right.”
In the following days, they recurred to the matter frequently. A dozen
times, Miss Penny suggested suddenly a new topic of conversation that
had popped into her head as appropriate for Anna to introduce as an
alternative to that of tombstones; but each one being only more utterly
absurd than the foregoing, Anna would laugh until she cried, Miss Penny
joining her merrily. None the less, when she returned late Saturday
afternoon, she announced that she had gotten away from the little lamb,
though not perhaps very far.
The girl had proposed one subject after another, receiving no response.
And it had presently been borne in upon her there could hardly be a
response in the nature of the case. Mrs. Langley was really living,
so far as she was alive at all, in another generation, so that trying
to converse with her was like shouting to someone miles behind one on
the highway and only visible because of curves in the course of it.
The years she had lived in retirement had counted for little more than
nothing. Her mind was twenty years younger than the village she dwelt
in.
“When I realised that, I tried to get back, and after a bit she was
glad to talk about Ella May,” Anna said to Miss Penny as she dried the
china after tea. “Only you would hardly know it _was_ Ella May. Mr.
Langley’s Ella May has been growing all these years until she went to
college with Rusty and jumped ahead and graduated and--O dear me! Hers
is still a teeny baby three days old. Now, Miss Penny, when those two
get to heaven one of them is going to have the surprise of their lives.”
“Why Anna,” murmured Miss Penny reproachfully.
“Meantime, things are at sixes and sevens with both of them. What
she needs is another baby, and what he needs is a full grown wife.
Both of ’em need it frightfully. But how in the world is it ever
going to be brought about, and who is to do it? I may think I am
Charley-on-the-spot for ordinary cases, but a sticker like this stumps
me flat. It would take someone a heap smarter than me to haul her over
all the years she has missed and bring her up to date. And while that’s
being done to her mind, her face, her looks ought to be stretched the
other way until she looks somewhere near as young as her husband.”
The girl sighed. “It’s like the North-west Passage. It ought to be
done, and I suppose it could be, but not by yours truly. And the worst
is, she refuses to see anybody else. She hardly pays any more attention
to Mr. Langley than she did before--just sends him orders about me
through Big Bell. O Miss Penny, did you ever hear the proverb ‘Let
sleeping dogs lie’?”