On the afternoon following Alice Lorraine’s strange adventure, Mr.
Langley sat at his study window gazing out over the pickets of the
paling towards the bushes and scrub trees which marked the line of
the river, but which, being mainly oaks, still hid the stream itself
from view. He was ready for Sunday even to the point of having tidied
his desk so that it looked unfamiliar. He was conscious--vaguely
conscious--of working better and more easily of late--with more spirit.
It might be that it was only a sort of rebound after the period of
depression into which he had fallen when someone had reminded him of
the fact that Ella May, whom he had always thought of as a little
girl, would now have been a woman grown, older than her mother had
been at her birth, and he had lost the child-companion of his thoughts
and wanderings. Even so, something must have happened from without
himself to pull him out of that slough. That something was, of course,
connected with his wife’s new interest in life--at least in so much of
life as was represented by the other Miller girl.
It was probably recollection of Anna that made him think at first
glance that the figure coming along the avenue at a distance beyond
the lane was Anna, but, looking again, he saw that it was someone
else--one of the grammar school children, he fancied, though he
couldn’t seem to place her. He didn’t try long, for as his eyes dwelt
upon that particular spot, something disconcerting came suddenly to
him. Last evening as he had walked slowly homewards just before full
darkness, he had looked up at this point to see approaching him the
figures of a man and woman or youth and maiden whom one glance showed
to be intensely interested in one another or in a common subject and
who seemed to be strangers to him. Then he had utterly forgotten them.
For he had been arrested by a loud chattering in a tree at the roadside
and had gone to see why a squirrel should be awake at that time of day.
Then, walking on, he had met Alice Lorraine. She was alone, but--the
minister shook his head. It seemed now to him that the figure of the
girl he had seen walking with the strange man was Alice Lorraine.
And yet--it couldn’t be. The man and woman weren’t figments of his
imagination, he was sure of that. They must, however, have turned back
at that point for some reason. And quite likely he had stood looking
for and calling to the squirrel longer than he had realised and Alice
had come along meantime.
The click of his gate recalled his thoughts sharply. On a sudden the
man sat erect and stared--almost glared at the strange yet familiar
figure he saw coming slowly up the flagged walk. For an instant he
could not believe it--could not credit the evidence of his eyes. Then
he recollected the preceding Saturday and--O, that sermon of Sunday!
And he groaned within his heart. Had that child been so affected as
to sacrifice her vanity thus? It was worse than absurd. It was cruel,
monstrous!
He went to the door to let her in.
“Anna, take off your hat,” he bade her, his voice stern through
repressed feeling.
Obeying silently, Anna Miller stood before him with downcast eyes. She
looked like a boy,--a handsome lad of perhaps a dozen years. Her long
yellow hair had been shorn. Parted at one side, the thick, short unruly
locks curled about her peaked face and pipe-stem neck, emphasizing the
childish delicacy of her features, the long curling eyelashes and the
sweet curve of her mouth. Later Mr. Langley realised this, and the fact
that though Anna looked younger, she had somehow quite lost whatever it
was in expression or countenance that likened her to a doll. He, who
had never acknowledged that likeness while it existed, became aware of
it after it had been displaced by something else. But at the moment the
loss seemed irreparable and entire; the hard ugly fact seemed quite
without extenuation.
With an effort the girl raised her eyes and smiled.
“I wonder if Mrs. Langley wants to see me?” she asked.
“She always wants to see you, Anna,” he returned half absently,
frowning unconsciously. But as she made a move to go in, he arrested
her.
“Why have you done this foolish thing, tell me, child!” he demanded
reproachfully.
“Because--well--” Anna choked--“Honestly, Mr. Langley, I _can’t_
tell you now,” she faltered. “Ma cried and Miss Penny and even Mrs.
Lorraine, and Pa took to the wood-pile. It’s only--a sort of a joke.”
“A poor sort of joke, it seems to me,” he remarked and betook himself
to his study.
Mrs. Langley cried, too. But whereas one would have deprecated Anna’s
mother’s tears and Miss Penny’s, it was probably good for Mrs. Langley
to forget herself for the moment and be really moved by something
beyond her immediate narrow horizon. It was, perhaps, fortunate for her
that after all those arid, selfish years she had tears of sympathy to
weep.
Anna found her looking better. Since the girl had begun to visit her,
Mrs. Langley had slept at night and suffered less and less pain during
the day. This afternoon she wore an old-fashioned lace fichu over her
ugly Mother Hubbard gown which so relieved the sharpness of her face
and the yellow tone of her skin, that Anna had no hesitation in kissing
her when she saw that it was expected of her.
But as she stood before her, suddenly Mrs. Langley raised both hands
and cried out.
“Anna Miller! Your lovely hair!” she exclaimed incredulously, “you’ve
had it all cut off!” And covering her face with her hands she began to
weep.
Anna, who had had a hard week and a difficult home-coming, was startled
and distressed. She stood quite still with tightly clasped hands. It
might kill an invalid to cry like that. If they knew, they would never
let her in again. What if Big Bell should come in now--or Mr. Langley?
How angry he would be! Anna hadn’t supposed he had it in him until she
had heard his voice to-day. He was probably thinking then that it would
be a shock to his wife, and that she was a hateful thing not to have
thought of it.
Poor Mrs. Langley! Her shoulders were shaking. Anna went closer and put
her arm about her gently.
“Don’t cry. Don’t feel badly about me, Mrs. Langley,” she begged
softly. “It’ll grow out again. I’m awfully sorry, but honest and true,
I couldn’t help it.”
Mrs. Langley uncovered her face.
“Couldn’t help it?” she repeated wonderingly, adding with more spirit
than she had ever exhibited before since Anna had known her. “Do you
mean that someone cut it off by force and stole it? O, Anna, if they
did that, I’ll have Mr. Langley put them in prison right away!”
Anna couldn’t help laughing. But she said to herself it wasn’t bad for
Mrs. Langley to believe her husband was Charley-on-the-spot, whether he
really was or not.
“Well, no’m, not just that,” she said, “but----”
“But what?” demanded the invalid rather sharply.
“I haven’t told anyone yet,” replied Anna softly. “I just let them
think that I--just did it, you know, and that I like it better. I
thought they wouldn’t mind so much as if they really knew. But I’ll
tell you if you want me to.”
Mrs. Langley gazed at the girl wonderingly. Anna was pale and there
were bluish shadows under her eyes which looked very big and rather
wistful to-day. Already Mrs. Langley began to feel that if she could
but forget that shimmering mass of gold about her shoulders of a week
since, she might like her even better as she was now. The short locks
curled so gracefully and stood out so picturesquely about her little
face and slender throat that her head was like a bright, loose-petalled
flower upon its stem.
“Do tell me about it, Anna, if you’re not too tired,” she said
wistfully, endeavoring rather vainly to soften her harsh voice. “No,
don’t sit there, poor child. You shall have this soft rocking chair for
your sharp little bones.” And before Anna realised what she was doing,
she had risen and forced the girl into her own padded rocker.
Of course Anna would not keep it, but she drew another close. She
rather shrank from making the explanation; but she said to herself
sagely that it might do Mrs. Langley good to hear it, and it might
forward a certain scheme she had in mind--a wonderful plan that was to
crown all her endeavors and make everyone happy. Apparently it hadn’t
hurt her to cry, for she had hopped out of that rocking chair and
whisked her into it as nimbly and neatly as any strong person could
have done. _She should worry!_
“Well, Mrs. Langley, you see I found my friend Bessy very bad off,”
she began. “It was all very sad because Joe her husband wasn’t long
dead, and there was the baby, little Joe, Junior, and her chum Hazel
sticking by her through everything and supposing she had lost her job,
though they took her back again. I slept with Hazel Monday night and
woke up towards morning and found her crying. It seemed that Bessy had
enough laid up to bury her; but she’d been sick so long that Hazel had
just had to break into it, what with medicine and the baby’s milk, and
of course she had to have something to eat herself or she couldn’t have
done for Bessy. And here it was almost gone, and Bessy didn’t know it
had been touched, and was feeling so secure about it. You might not
think anyone would mind, Mrs. Langley, but there’s something frightful
in the idea of being buried by charity.”
“I suppose so,” Mrs. Langley assented absently.
“Charity down there doesn’t mean what it does with us, you see,--public
charity isn’t like the charity of the Bible, you know.”
Mrs. Langley nodded impatiently.
“Well, I managed to get Hazel chirked up so that she went to sleep,
and I lay staring at the smoky ceiling and wondering what to do. Then
suddenly I had a hunch. And the very first thing in the morning I went
down to Mason and Martin’s and talked with a woman in the hair goods
I used to know that had first put me wise about such things. She gave
me a tip and the people she sent me to offered me sixty-five dollars
for my hair--the braid was almost a yard long and about as thick at
one end as at the other, you know. Then I went back and told Hazel I
could get sixty-five dollars for her at any moment. She thought it was
a diamond ring or family jewels I could put in soak, which wouldn’t
of course mean much at a time like that, and she cheered right up.
And Bessy seemed to feel a change and to be really better, and we
all talked about old times in the store and laughed a lot. But that
was Bessy’s last day. She died in the night. In the morning I went
down--and got the money.”
Unconsciously the girl drew a deep sigh even as she forced a little
plaintive smile. Mrs. Langley sighed yet more deeply. She wasn’t
sufficiently practical to ask any of the obvious questions or to
suggest the alternatives with which others were to confront and
confound the girl even though they were quite futile now that the deed
was done.
“It was good of you, Anna,--it was a beautiful thing to do,” she
acknowledged, “only I am afraid you will be sorry.”
“I should worry. It will be good for me, and a lot less strain on the
looking glasses,” the girl owned, shrugging her shoulders. “And anyhow,
Mrs. Langley, I never could be sorry, after seeing real things like
I saw there: Bessy only barely two years older than I and Hazel just
my age, and--O, I’m so thankful it was so long and not thin and that
I had sense to think of it in time. Honest and true, I don’t believe
I could ever be happy again or sleep nights if we had had to call
in--outsiders. But you never could understand that without being right
there.”
Mrs. Langley sighed again.
“Of course I shall sort of miss it,” Anna rattled on. “I used to brush
it at night, have it all over me, you know, and Rusty would tease me.
And I simply loved the feel of that fat braid flopping about. But it’s
just as well, for I sha’n’t have so much time now.”
“You look--O, Anna, at this moment you look just as my baby would
have looked when she began to run about!” cried Mrs. Langley almost
enthusiastically. “But please don’t put on your hat now. You have only
just come.”
“I really must. Ma thought I ought not to come at all, but I felt as if
I must get it over--about my hair, you know.”
“Then you’re staying at home,” remarked Mrs. Langley with her
occasional acuteness as to the present moment. “When do you go back to
Miss Penny?”
The girl hesitated. “Not for some little time, Mrs. Langley.”
It would have seemed that Mrs. Langley _must_ have asked the desired
question. But the invalid was thinking of herself.
“O Anna, how very nice! You won’t be nearly so busy, then, and can get
over here oftener. I wish you would come regularly in the middle of the
week, too. Can you?” she asked promptly.
Anna sighed. “The fact is, I’m going to be a heap busier--that’s why
I’m staying at home,” she returned obscurely. “But Mrs. Langley, some
of the ladies would just love to drop in to see you.”
“Anna Miller, I don’t know what you are thinking of,” Mrs. Langley
complained feebly, falling back in her chair. “I have been an invalid
since my baby died. I couldn’t endure seeing anyone.”
“You see me.”
“That’s very different. Besides, you took an interest in my baby’s
grace. No one else did that. Even the baby’s father----”
“O Mrs. Langley,” Anna interrupted quickly, “Mr. Langley doesn’t--he’s
a real true-blue Christian, you know. He doesn’t think of Ella May as
dead, and so----”
“Never mind that. But I wish that if you aren’t going back to Miss
Penny’s you’d come right here and stay all the time.”
Anna could scarcely restrain a groan. “I’m needed at home,” she said
briefly and drew her jacket together. But after all, the real business
of her call hadn’t been touched upon.
“You knew that there was a baby, too--little Joe, Junior?” she asked.
Mrs. Langley assented without interest.
“He was left pretty much alone, poor little lamb, wasn’t he?”
“I suppose the girl Hazel would look after him?”
Anna’s eyes flashed. “She makes seven dollars and a half a week--that’s
every penny she has to live on. Even if she could work with him on her
hands, she couldn’t buy his milk with what was left each week.”
“O, I see. I suppose she will put him in an orphan asylum?”
“Orphan asylum nothing!” cried Anna and waited a minute. Then as Mrs.
Langley did not speak she said casually: “I brought him home with me.”
Mrs. Langley sat up straight. “Anna Miller!” she exclaimed.
“There was nothing else to do and anyhow I wanted to. The little beggar
needs fresh air and sunshine and--Farleigh.”
“You don’t mean that you’re going to keep him?” Mrs. Langley protested.
Anna’s heart sank. She had truly decided to bring the baby home because
there had seemed no alternative. But no sooner was she out of the
sadness and confusion and settled in the train than she had realised
the fitness, the inevitability of her action. She was bringing the
baby straight to Mrs. Langley. A baby was exactly what Mrs. Langley
needed and wanted and what Mr. Langley would enjoy most of anything.
If she had chosen, she would probably have had a girl, but she wasn’t
sure that that wouldn’t have been a mistake. And though Anna, who was
wild over all young creatures, was attached to little Joe already, she
decided to hand him over to Mrs. Langley as soon as the transfer could
be affected. But even before she had come to the parsonage to-day, she
had realised that it wasn’t altogether the simple matter it would seem
to be and that it wasn’t to be accomplished without finesse. Still she
had expected one visit to finish the negotiations,--and she had nearly
missed mentioning it at all!
“I hardly know,” she faltered. “That is, I’m going to keep him
of course until I find a good home for him. I’d like to keep him
always only--ma wasn’t so tremendously pleased to have him added to
her family, and of course I wouldn’t have dreamed of taking him to
Miss Penny’s though she would have taken him in forever if I had
said the word. However, I own that it was something of a surprise
to ma--springing the baby on her at the same time she saw my
Sampson-Delilah hair-cut. But heaps of people would give their heads to
get a nice baby ready-made just at the cunning age, or nearly, and with
the worst of his teething over.”
She waited anxiously. Mrs. Langley only stared at her.
“People that haven’t any children or people that have lost
children,--lost them when they were babies, ought to jump at such a
chance,” she went on, longing to have Mrs. Langley ask some question,
however reluctantly, concerning the child. But the invalid held up a
protesting hand.
“Anna! I would never have believed that you would speak in that
unfeeling way about--the loss of a baby!” she cried.
“I didn’t mean to,” said Anna quickly. “I just wanted--perhaps Mr.
Langley might know of some good home where they would take in the
little fellow. Would you mind telling him about little Joe and asking
him?”
“Mind! Of course I would mind, Anna Miller! I--I never could get
through it!”
“Then I suppose I shall have to see him myself,” remarked Anna
tentatively.
“Anna, Mr. Langley is an overworked man,” said his wife rather
surprisingly. “He has a great deal to do as chairman of the school
committee, besides all his church business. Don’t go to him with any
such thing as that. And--O Anna, don’t say anything more about it to
me. Don’t mention the matter at all when you come next Saturday--or
Wednesday, if you can come on Wednesday. I’m all upset.”