Pushing by Alice Lorraine, deaf to her entreaties, the constable and
two of the men made their way into the shop and after an hasty glance
about the lower room hastened upstairs. Mr. Langley, after a brief
word to Mrs. Lorraine, followed. And despite his haste and excitement
and perturbation, he noticed the homelike appearance of the place he
recollected as a littered work shop.
But of the upper chamber he noted no detail. As his head rose above
the railing of the stair, he saw the men start back from the further
end of the place. Peering into the shadows, he saw the figure of a man
stretched upon an old couch. Approaching, he saw that he was burning
with fever and unconscious. The man, who was very tall, was not at
all the tramp in appearance, though he seemed to have slept in his
clothes. He was well dressed and a superficial view pronounced him of
refined presence. He was like a skeleton, however, and his purple face
cadaverous to the extreme.
Mr. Langley asked one of the men to go for the doctor, sending Mrs.
Lorraine up as he went. The constable said he would wait below. The
other man took a chair in the further end of the room as Mrs. Lorraine
joined Mr. Langley by the couch.
“Do you know this man?” he asked.
“I never saw him in my life,” she declared, and going to the stairs,
summoned Alice. The girl appeared, white as chalk.
“Alice, do you know this man,” demanded the mother sternly.
“I know him, certainly!” cried the girl defiantly. “He is--he is a
gentleman. He has done no one any harm. He came to Farleigh to look for
someone he knew once, and I told him he might stay here.”
“But if he is a gentleman, how came you here, Alice Lorraine?” cried
her mother.
“I haven’t been here long, and--how could he know it! Look at him, will
you!” the girl cried. But her mother continued to look sternly upon her.
“He went away,” the girl forced herself to explain. “He was coming
back before he went West where he lives now. He didn’t come and--I was
afraid something had--happened. I came down this afternoon to look once
more and found him--just so. O Mr. Langley, is he dying, do you think?”
“I shouldn’t judge so. I should say he was in the early stage of a
fever. He is terribly emaciated. He looks starved. The doctor will be
here shortly. Meantime let me see if I can loosen his clothing a bit.”
As he bent over the couch, Alice’s heart went out to him. He seemed so
gentle and tender though he had no idea the man was not a stranger and
probably believed him to be a tramp. As he put his arm beneath the
sick man’s shoulders to change his position, the latter opened his eyes
wide. Mr. Langley started but finished what he was about.
The doctor came up and Mrs. Lorraine and Alice went below. After some
little time Mr. Langley joined them.
“It is probably pneumonia, or will be within a few hours,” he
announced. “Dr. Porter will send for the ambulance and have him taken
to the hospital at Wenham where he will have the best of care.”
He turned to Alice with a kind look.
“O mother, couldn’t we take him into the cottage and take care of him?”
cried the girl beseechingly. “He is good and--O, so unfortunate, and--O
if you knew something I know, you couldn’t refuse. And--if Mr. Langley
knew--something else, he would beg you to.”
Mr. Langley looked at the girl with an odd expression on his face.
“The man’s eyes are exactly like those of a dear friend of mine who has
been dead these six years,” he said keeping his own eyes upon her the
while. “For a moment I forgot all and thought he was Dick Cartwright.”
Alice wrung her hands.
“Tell me, Alice Lorraine, who is the man above? Is it indeed Dick
Cartwright?” he asked.
“Yes, Mr. Langley, it is,” the girl owned with a great sense of relief.
“He didn’t die. It was another man, but he gave him his name because he
wished to be dead. He only came here to see you and Reuben. Then he
was going back again. I--happened upon him one day and--after that I
tried to help him. He is really----”
Mr. Langley was half way up the stair. Mrs. Lorraine stopped him. “Tell
the doctor we will take him into the cottage,” she bade him. “Alice and
I will go right over to get a bed ready.”
They got the bed ready and Mr. Langley and the doctor carried the sick
man over, undressed him and got him into it. The doctor secured a nurse
and Mr. Langley waited until she should come. Meanwhile Alice Lorraine
related to him and to her mother the whole story Dick Cartwright had
told her.
Mrs. Lorraine remained at the cottage, while Alice returned to Miss
Penny’s. When Mr. Langley took her over he told Miss Penny briefly who
the sick man was, and they discussed the situation as it concerned
Reuben, who was fortunately out of the house at that moment.
They decided to say nothing to him until after Christmas when Mr.
Langley would tell him the whole story. Reuben could then, if he
wished, stay at the cottage for the remainder of his holidays.
As a matter of fact, Reuben was to remain there considerably longer
than that. When it was time for him to return to college his father was
just out of danger and Reuben did not dream of leaving him. He did not,
indeed, return to college again until the following autumn. As soon as
Dick Cartwright was able to be about the house, Mrs. Lorraine returned
to Miss Penny’s, and Reuben and his father took the cottage as their
home. Reuben got a position in the bank at Wenham and went back and
forth to his work happily. His father kept house. As he grew stronger,
Mr. Langley persuaded him to practice on the church organ. In the late
spring, he was back again in his old position of organist at Farleigh
church, and in the summer he secured, with Mr. Langley’s help, the
position to teach music in the public schools at Wenham. This gave him
a sufficient income not only to live comfortably but to pay Reuben’s
expenses at college. Reuben, however, still preferred to work his way
through, so the money was saved towards the pipe organ.
* * * * *
To return now to Mr. Langley and the day before Christmas--that
Christmas which was to be the happiest of his life.
He hadn’t realised that he was tired until he opened his own gate late
that afternoon. Then suddenly such a dead weight of fatigue dropped
down upon him that he felt as if he couldn’t crawl to his own door.
Certainly he could never attain the sanctuary of his study where he
could think over the events of the afternoon and realise the joy that
had come to him with the return of his friend as it were from the gates
of death.
Someone came to the door and peered eagerly up the street. It was Anna
Miller. Forgetting himself, Mr. Langley called to her and hurried up
the steps.
“O Anna, is anything wrong?” he asked anxiously, for he would have
thought of her as being somewhere with Rusty and Reuben.
“Wrong!” the girl echoed with ringing voice and beaming face. “O Mr.
Langley, everything is so beautifully right that it seemed as if you
would never, never come. O hurry, please.”
She led him, not as he expected, towards his wife’s door, but into the
front room across the passage from the study. It had been the parlour
but was seldom used now-a-days.
It looked exceedingly cheerful now, but so would the cellar have looked
to Mr. Langley had the potato-bin held the same group that he saw on
the brocaded sofa. Mrs. Langley, bright and alert with flushed cheeks
and not uncomely, despite Seth Miller’s opinion, sat thereon with Joe,
Junior, curled up beside her while Big Bell hung over them, trying now
to make herself inconspicuous and really appearing to be twice her
natural size.
As the minister paused on the threshold, his wife looked up and smiled.
She had actually learned since noon to smile. Or it may be that she had
recollected her old smile of twenty-odd years ago, for she looked to
Russell Langley at that moment like the bride of his youth, or rather
like little Ella May’s mother.
“Russell, what do you think! Anna has offered us this precious baby as
a Christmas gift!” she cried eagerly. “Shall we accept?”
He put Anna into the most comfortable chair in the room and moved it
close to the sofa. Then he seated himself the other side of the baby
whom he bent to kiss. And little Joe repeated what no doubt seemed to
him the pass-word for this household, “baa-baa!”
Mr. Langley turned eagerly to the girl.
“Do you mean it, Anna?” he asked with such a look in his eyes that Anna
could not answer. But she nodded, smiling through tears.
He took the baby into his arms and caressed it.
“I can’t--we can’t begin to tell Anna how happy we shall be nor how
grateful we are to her, can we Ella?” he said warmly.
“We’ll certainly jump at the chance,” Mrs. Langley rejoined, borrowing
Anna’s phraseology with such comical effect that they all laughed
merrily. And little Joe smiled confidently into Anna’s eyes.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.