As Mr. Langley walked slowly back to Farleigh in the early dusk of the
cloudy November day, he reflected upon his visit, upon the beautiful
baby, upon what had carried him thither and upon Anna’s unaccountable
unwillingness to gratify his wife’s not unnatural desire. But he said
to himself it wasn’t really unaccountable--it only seemed so to him.
How serious the girl had looked as she stood with the baby in her arms,
its little face hidden on her shoulder--and how staunch and true! And
when all was said, she had simply refused to neglect her duty as she
saw it. Quite likely, too, she saw more clearly than he. Certainly
there was nothing selfish in her standpoint, while he, for his part,
could not so absolve himself. He hoped he had not urged her unduly.
Nevertheless, the situation was not normal. Anna’s mother was rightly
troubled. The girl was too young to shoulder the responsibility she had
taken upon herself. After the strain of those hard years in the city,
she ought to be free to devote herself to school and a school-girl’s
pleasures with only the normal home duties of such an one. Someone
ought to adopt the baby--someone in Farleigh so that Anna need not be
separated wholly from him. Someone--Mr. Langley stopped and put forth
considerable effort to dislodge a stone between the flags with his
walking stick. As he went on again, he said to himself that it would
be a simple matter to put through. If they knew there was a chance, it
seemed to him that people would simply flock to the Millers’ in crowds
to beg for that most engaging baby. How wise the little fellow had
looked as he listened to the watch!
Sighing vague, he hastened on as if he wished to escape something. But
with all his speed, he was unable to do so, and depression settled upon
him. He supposed that it was because he was drawing near the parsonage
and would have to disappoint his wife.
He went directly to her room, realising, even in his preoccupation,
that he owed the privilege to Anna. For only since she had entered
the wedge, had he fallen into the habit of seeking his wife at odd
moments. And though she rather tolerated than welcomed his visits,
he was grateful for even tolerance. For her long illness and silence
and desire for seclusion had estranged husband and wife almost as
effectually as bitter feeling might have done.
Mrs. Langley sat in her cushioned chair in the dark, gloomy room,
awaiting the word he was to bring. Her eyes were weak from headache and
want of sunshine and out-of-door air, and in winter she had her tea
very early to avoid lighting the heavily shaded lamp. Both Mr. Langley
and Bell Adams felt that, having admitted Anna Miller, if Mrs. Langley
would also let in the sunshine she might utterly banish neuralgia.
But neither ventured to make the suggestion. She had already had her
tea, and when he entered the room, her husband felt rather than saw her
eager questioning gaze.
“Anna still feels that she cannot get away without the baby, Ella
dear,” he said gently, seating himself on the edge of a chair, like
a poor relation in a fine drawing room. “And really, I see her
difficulty. As a matter of fact, the girl has added one member--a
complete stranger with no claim whatever--to a rather straitened
household and she doesn’t wish her mother to feel the burden unduly.
And certainly Mrs. Miller had a difficult time when her children were
small and----”
His wife broke in almost fiercely.
“Russell Langley! I tell you that I cannot get along without seeing
Anna at least every Saturday,” she cried.
He sighed as he pushed back a bit further on the chair, though not
enough to be comfortable.
“Well, Ella, why not let her bring him along--why not try it just for
once?” he asked quietly. “He’s really a beautiful child. (The minister
was quite sincere.) He sat on my lap all the while I was there, quiet
as a mouse, and the first I knew the little fellow was feeling for my
watch. I only wish you could have seen his face, dear, as I held it to
his ear. Do let Anna bring him on Saturday!”
“I couldn’t bear the shock of it,” she said dully as if repeating a
formula, then suddenly enquired: “Russell, where’s my watch?”
“In the top drawer of my desk. I wind it every night. Would you like
it, Ella?”
She assented rather sharply and he fetched it. Now he seated himself
comfortably and taking the key from his chain, wound the watch and set
it exactly by his own and put it on the stand with the medicine bottles
and the photograph of the lamb.
“She’s a stubborn girl, that Anna Miller,” his wife remarked.
“She means well,” he returned absently in conventional phrase, his mind
being otherwise engaged as he presently showed.
“I have it!” he exclaimed suddenly, holding his watch from him as if he
had discovered the clue to the mystery in it. “Anna can bring the baby
with her, but you needn’t see him--you needn’t realise that he’s in the
house at all; and you wouldn’t, he’s such a mouse. And I’ll mind him
while Anna visits you. He knows me--I think he rather takes to me, you
know, and I can carry him all over the house and show him everything.
I fancy the little chap might rather like the statuette on the parlour
clock and--O, the elves on the silver water-pitcher! And there’s my
crystal paper weight. And perhaps when I’m over in Wenham I will just
step into Wetherell’s and see what they have in the way of toys. Boys
generally----”
But Mrs. Langley made a sudden move.
“Russell Langley!” she cried. “If that baby comes to this house, he
shall come straight to my room. He can have my watch to play with. He
can’t hurt it, and if he bites the case, I don’t care.”
Seth Miller was one of the folk who adored Mr. Langley and he was aware
of the disappointed look upon his face as he left the house that Sunday
afternoon. He had unbounded confidence in his daughter; if she caused
the disappointment, it was because she couldn’t help it. But he felt as
if he should like to do something particularly nice for the minister to
make up for it.
As he pondered upon it, it came to him that he might be able to do
some bit of carpentry at the church as a surprise to Mr. Langley. But
he couldn’t think of anything that was necessary, and to discover any
possibility in the way of ornamentation he would have to go over to the
church. He had gone over early that morning to see to the fire, had
attended service, waiting until everyone was out after Sunday school
to lock the building, and he would have to go over early to unlock the
building and see that all was right for evening service. He might have
postponed this matter until that time, but it seemed to make it of more
consequence if he made a special journey, so he decided to go at once.
He was tired enough, however, not to wish to go upstairs for his keys.
He had an extra key to the little side door leading to the vestry which
he kept in the kitchen so that Anna could get it when he was away. She
had sung in the choir before the baby’s arrival and had let the others
in and out for rehearsals. But when he looked, the key was not in its
place.
Mrs. Miller and the boys had gone home with Miss Penny and Anna was in
her room, so he fetched his bunch of keys and went on, wondering that
Anna, who was exceedingly careful of such things, should have failed
to return the key to the nail where it belonged. As he approached the
church from the rear he was suddenly startled by a sound which was,
however, not startling in itself--a low, sweet strain of music which
seemed to come from the church and to be the voice of the well-known
organ.
Seth Miller’s heart beat violently. The organist came from Wenham and
did not play for evening service. Moreover, she played at Wenham in the
afternoon--she was in the church there at this very moment. No one else
but Mr. Langley had a key and he did not play the big organ. And--how
early the sun set. It was almost dark now. Miller did not believe in
ghosts, but--it would be dark inside.
The music ceased. As it died away, it came to him that Anna might be in
the church. Perhaps the baby had fallen asleep and she had run down for
a little change. He didn’t know that she could play the pipe organ, but
she was full of music like her mother. Moreover, he wasn’t sure as the
music he had heard had been correct music. He had something of an ear
himself, but the strain was low and he had been excited, and for all he
knew, it might have been the chromatic scale. Of course it was Anna,
and he hurried round to the door of which she had the key.
But it was fast. He had told Anna not to lock the door behind her at
choir rehearsal, but perhaps she felt that this was different. He
unlocked it and went in making a racket and calling her name lest she
be frightened.
She was not to be found, however. The audience room looked exactly
as it had when he had left it early in the afternoon except that now
twilight had fallen upon it. He went to the organ loft, but saw no
traces of anyone having been there. And he began to wonder if he had
been mistaken. Perhaps he hadn’t heard anything. But he knew he had.
Perhaps it had come from elsewhere? It had sounded like the organ, but
it was rather low and soft for that great organ. Still, where could it
have come from? Shaking his head, Seth Miller returned home, his errand
forgotten.
That evening as he was about to start for the church, he asked Anna
what she had done with the key to the vestry door.
“It’s there on the nail, Pa,” she said, pointing to the place where it
should have been--and where it was!
Too confounded for speech, he took it down, handled and put it back.
Then he went out without a word.
He decided to say nothing to Anna until next day. But the next day
brought wild excitement to the house in the form of an invitation for
Anna to bring little Joe to the parsonage on Saturday, and he forgot
the lesser in the greater.
The excitement was great, too, at Miss Penny’s, and Joe, Junior,
acquired a new importance. Anna consulted Mrs. Lorraine and Miss
Penny, and even Mrs. Miller showed an interest in the baby’s toilette
for the occasion. But no one guessed how painfully the girl made her
preparations, for she expected to return without the child. She sang as
she flew about, and laughed at the boys who were working hard in all
their spare time to teach the baby to talk before he should visit the
parsonage. Freddy began with _cat_ and _rat_, those being the words he
first learned to read. Frank, the older and wiser, experimented with
bow-wow, moo-moo and other onomatopoetic syllables, but with equal
unsuccess. The baby wouldn’t even say _O_.
On Saturday afternoon, Seth Miller himself drove them over to the
parsonage, Miss Penny having loaned her pony. Mr. Langley came to the
gate and proudly and rather spectacularly bore the baby into the house
as if it were a royal infant. He removed his little bonnet and cloak
with surprising deftness, admiring the swan’s down border of the hood
as if it were ermine. Big Bell stood at the end of the passage with
a wistful expression on her homely face and Anna tiptoed past Mrs.
Langley’s door to let her see the baby first.
But the emotion displayed by the giantess gave the girl pause. On
the threshold of Mrs. Langley’s room she was seized with sudden
apprehension. Suppose it should be too much for the invalid! Her
reiterated phrase as to its breaking her heart to see the baby
acquired a warning significance. On a sudden Anna wished with all her
heart that she hadn’t insisted. Suppose the shock were too much for
Mrs. Langley!
“We’re here,” she said faintly, ready to back out across the threshold
at a word.
“Come up near,” Mrs. Langley bade her more hoarsely than usual and not
at all reassuringly. She obeyed tremblingly.
Taking the customary chair, she settled the baby comfortably and fixed
her eyes upon his wisp of hair. If she hadn’t heard her heart beating
wildly she wouldn’t have believed that she breathed at all.
For a few moments Mrs. Langley peered at the child in silence. He was
beautifully dressed, but he wasn’t at all what she had expected from
Anna’s and her husband’s accounts. He wasn’t even what a baby would
naturally have been expected to be apart from pardonable exaggeration.
He wasn’t round nor rosy nor pretty; he looked like nothing so much as
a very ugly rubber doll dressed in fine raiment. Moreover, Ella Langley
had so dreaded the ordeal that cold sweat stood upon her forehead in
beads.
None the less, as she gazed, her heart warmed. There was, somehow,
something appealing in his big, mournful eyes and plaintive little
white, pinched face and perhaps even in the very want of baby charms.
The woman hadn’t seen a child for years upon years and suddenly her
heart yearned towards this one overwhelmingly.
“O Anna, let me take him in my arms,” she entreated in a voice Anna
had never heard before. Surprised and delighted, and without for the
moment considering the significance of it, the girl rose quickly to put
the baby into the outstretched arms.
But for the first time Joe, Junior, who went mournfully wherever he was
placed, indifferent to all but Anna, resisted--resisted convulsively.
Springing back with a strength he had not seemed to possess, he clung
to Anna with a grasp that was painful in its intensity. Then as Mrs.
Langley’s hand fell gently upon his shoulder, he uttered a piercing
cry--such a shriek as had never before echoed within the parsonage
walls. His arms tight about Anna’s neck, clutching like a frightened
wild animal, Joe, Junior, continued to shriek and without pause.
Never before since Anna had known him had the baby uttered a sound
above a mere whimper. The girl’s blood congealed for terror. As
he continued to scream in a manner that seemed to stop her heart
and paralyze her muscles, she stood motionless for a few seconds.
Recovering herself, she fled wildly from the room.
She never knew when the baby stopped screaming. Snatching his wraps, in
some manner she got him into them, and careless of her own, rushed out
of the house and through the gate, flying along the village street in
the direction of the Hollow and home. And before the minister, who was
in the garret, happily occupied in searching for toys or something that
might take the place of toys, had located the strange sound or realised
what it meant, Anna Miller and Joe, Junior, were out of sight.