Zoe

Perhaps the punishment that was to come to the organist by the hands of little Zoe—those fat, dimpled, brown hands, that flourished about in the air so joyously when he whistled a tune to her—began from the very first, for it was impossible to think of the child without thinking of the mother, and to look at Zoe without seeing the likeness that his fond fancy made far plainer than it really was; and to think of the mother and to see her likeness was to remember that meeting in the churchyard, and the sad, pleading voice and hollow cough, and the cold denial he had given, and the beating rain and howling wind of that dreary night. He grew by degrees to excuse himself to himself, and to plead that he was taken unawares, and that, if she had not taken his answer as final, but had followed him to the house, he should certainly have relented.

And then he went a step further. I think it was one July day, when the baby had been more than usually gracious to him, and he had ventured, in Mrs Gray's absence, to lift her out of the cradle and carry her down the garden path, finding her a heavier weight than when he had first taken her to the Grays' cottage. She had clapped her hands at a great, velvet-bodied humble bee; she had nestled her curly head into his neck, and with the feeling of her soft breath on his cheek he had said to himself: 'If Edith were to come back now, I would forgive her for the baby's sake, for Zoe's sake.' He forgot that he had need to be forgiven too. 'She will come back,' he told himself, 'she will come back to see the child. She could not be content to hear nothing more of her baby and never to see her, in spite of what she said. And when she comes it shall be different, for Zoe's sake.'

He wondered if Jane Sands knew where Edith was, or ever heard from her. He sometimes fancied that she did, and yet, if she knew nothing of the baby, it was hardly likely that she had any correspondence with the mother. He was puzzled, and more than once he felt inclined to let her into the secret, or at least drop some hint that might lead to its discovery.

It pleased him to imagine her delight over Edith's child, her pride in, and devotion to it; she would never rest till she had it under her care, and ousted Mrs Gray from all share in little Zoe. And yet, whenever he had got so far in his inclination to tell Jane, some proof of her absorption in that baby at Stokeley, for whom he had a sort of jealous dislike, threw him back upon himself, and made him doubt her affection for her young mistress, and resolve to keep the secret to himself, at any rate for the present.

He came the nearest telling her one day in August, when, as he was watering his flowers in the evening, Mrs Gray passed the gate with that very little Zoe, who was so constantly in his thoughts.

She had a little white sun-bonnet on, which Jane Sands had actually bestowed upon her—rather grudgingly, it is true, and only because there was some defect about it which made it unworthy of the pampered child at Stokeley. Zoe saw the organist, or, at least, Mrs Gray imagined that she did, for the cry she gave might equally well have been intended as a greeting to a pig down in the ditch.

'Well a-never, who 'd a' thought! she see you ever so far off, bless her! and give such a jump as pretty near took her out of my arms. Why there! Mr Robins don't want you, Miss Saucy, no one don't want such rubbige; a naughty, tiresome gal! as won't go to sleep, but keeps jumping and kicking and looking about till my arm's fit to drop with aching.'

Jane Sands was sitting at work just outside the kitchen door at the side of the house. He had seen her there a minute ago when he filled the watering-can at the pump, and a sudden impulse came into his mind to show her the child.

He did not quite decide what he should say, or what he should do, when the recognition, which he felt sure was unavoidable, followed the sight of the child; but he just yielded to the impulse, and took the child from Mrs Gray's arms and carried her round to the back-door. The recognition was even more instantaneous than he had expected. As he came round the corner of the house, with the little, white-bonneted girl in his arms, Jane sprang up with a cry of glad surprise and delight, such as swept away in a moment all his doubt of her loyalty to him and his, and all his remembrance of her absorption in that little common child at Stokeley. She made a step forward and then stood perfectly still, and the light and gladness faded out of her face, and her hands, that had been stretched out in delighted greeting, fell dull and lifeless to her sides.

He said nothing, but held the child towards her; it was only natural that she should doubt, being so unprepared, but a second glance would convince her.

'I thought,' she said, looking the baby over, with what in a less kind, gentle face, might have been quite a hard, critical manner, 'I thought for a minute'–

'Well?'

'I was mistaken,' she said; 'of course I was mistaken.' And then she added to herself more than to him, 'It is not a bit like'–

'Look again,' he said, 'look again; don't you see a likeness?'

'Likeness? Oh, I suppose it's the gypsy child up at Mrs Gray's, and you mean the likeness to the woman who came here that day she was left; but I don't remember enough of her to say. It's plain the child's a gypsy. What a swarthy skin, to be sure!'

Why, where were her eyes? To Mr Robins it was little Edith over again. He wondered that all the village did not see it and cry out on him.

But it was not likely that after this his confidence should go further, and just then the child began a little grumble, and he took her back hastily to Mrs Gray with a disappointed, crest-fallen feeling.

Jane Sands was conscious that her reception of the baby had not been satisfactory, and she tried to make amends by little complimentary remarks, which annoyed him more than her indifference.

'A fine, strong child, and does Mrs Gray great credit.'

'It's a nice bright little thing, and I daresay will improve as it grows older.'

She could not imagine why the organist grunted in such a surly way in reply to these remarks, for what on earth could it matter to him what anyone thought of a foundling, gypsy child?

CHAPTER VII

Gray Taken to the Hospital—Bill and the Baby—Mrs Gray Home Again—Edith, Come Home!

It was near the end of September that John Gray broke his leg. They were thrashing out a wheat-rick at Farmer Benson's, and somehow he tumbled from the top of the rick, and fell with his leg bent under him, and found that he could not stand when he tried to struggle up to his feet.

They ran to tell 'his missus,' who came straight off from the washtub, with the soapsuds still about her skinny red elbows, catching up Zoe from the cradle as she passed, at sight of whom Gray, in spite of the pain and the deadly faintness that was dimming his eyes and clutching his breath, made an effort to chirrup and snap his fingers at the little one.

'It's his innerds as is hurted,' explained one of the bystanders, with that wonderful openness and way of making the worst of everything that is found in that class.

'The spine of his back most like,' said another, 'like poor Johnson, over to Stokeley, as never walked another step arter his fall.'

'Ay, he do look mortal bad! 'Tis a terrible bad job!'

'Cut off like a flower!' sighed one of the women. 'There, bear up, my dear,' to Mrs Gray, with whom she had not been on speaking terms for some weeks, owing to a few words about her cat's thieving propensities, 'Dontee take on! I knows well enough what you feels, as is only three weeks since father was took with his fit.'

'Don't be skeered, old gal,' sounded Gray's voice, odd and unnatural to the ears of the hearers, and far away and independent to himself, 'I ain't so bad as that comes to'–

And then mercifully he became unconscious, for to go six miles with a broken leg in a cart without springs on the way to the hospital is not a joke, and the neighbours' kindly attempts to bring him round were happily unsuccessful. The worst part of that drive fell to the share of his wife, who sat holding his head on her lap as they jolted along, trying to keep the jars and bumps from jerking his leg, though all the time she firmly believed he was dead, and was already, in her dulled mind, making pitiful little arrangements about mourning and the funeral, and contemplating, with dreary equanimity, a widowed existence with three-and-sixpence a week for her and Tom and Bill and Zoe to live upon. She never left Zoe out of the calculation, even when it became most difficult to adjust the number of mouths to be fed with the amount of food to be put into them, and over this dark future fell the darker shadow of the workhouse, which closes the vista of life to most of the poor. No wonder they live entirely in the present, and shut their eyes persistently to the future!

There was not much going back into the past when she was a girl and the 'master' a lad, and they went courting of a Sunday afternoon along the green lanes. Life had been too matter-of-fact and full of hard work to leave much sentiment even in memory.

Mr Robins heard of the accident in the evening, and went up to the cottage, where he found Bill taking care of Zoe, who was having a fine time of it, having soon discovered that she had only to cry for anything that evening to get it, and that it was an occasion for displaying a will of her own in the matter of going to bed, and being preternaturally wide awake and inclined for a game, when on other nights she was quite content to be laid down in the wooden cradle, which was rapidly becoming too small for her increasing size.

Poor Bill had been at school when the accident happened, and, of course, the neighbours had made the very worst of the matter, so the poor boy hardly knew what part of his father had not been crushed or injured, or if he had been killed on the spot, or had been taken barely alive to the hospital. The baby had been pushed into his arms, so that he could not go up to the farm, nor find Tom to learn the rights of the matter; so that, when Mr Robins came into the cottage, he found both Bill and the baby crying together, the fire out, and the kettle upset into the fender.

'Give me the child,' the organist said. And Bill obeyed, as he did at the choir practice when he was told to pass a hymn-book, and too miserable to wonder much at this new aspect of his master, and at seeing him take the baby as if he knew all about it, and sit down in father's arm-chair.

'See if you can't make the fire burn up,' he went on; 'the child's cold.'

Zoe seemed well content with her new nurse, and left off crying, and sat blinking gravely at the fire, which Bill, much relieved at having something definite to do, soon roused up to a sparkling, crackling blaze with some dry sticks; while Mr Robins warmed her small, pink feet.

Bill would certainly have been surprised if he could have seen what was passing in the organist's mind, a proposal ripening into a firm resolve that he would take the child home that very night and tell Jane who she was. Let the village talk as it might, he did not mind; let them say what they pleased.

He knew enough of village reports to guess that Gray was not as badly hurt as every one declared; but still, even a trifling accident meant, at any rate, a week or two of very short commons at the cottage, perhaps less milk for the baby, or economy over fuel, and the September days were growing cold and raw, and there had been more than one frost in the mornings, and the baby's little toes were cold to his warm hand. Mrs Gray, too, would be occupied and taken up with her husband, and little Zoe would be pushed about from one to another, and he had heard that there was scarlatina about, and the relieving officer had been telling him that very morning how careless the people were about infection.

The cottage looked quite different in the blazing firelight, and Bill, encouraged by the organist's presence, tidied up the place, where the washtub stood just as Mrs Gray had left it; and he set the kettle on to boil, so that when Mrs Gray and Tom came in it presented quite a comfortable appearance.

Mrs Gray came in tired and tearful, but decidedly hopeful, having left Gray comfortably in bed with his leg set, and having received reassuring opinions from nurse and doctor: and the first alarm and apprehension being removed, there was a certain feeling of importance in her position as wife of the injured man, and excitement at a visit to the country town, both ways in a cart, which does not happen often in a life-time.

The baby, thanks to the warmth and Mr Robins's nursing, had fallen asleep in his arms. Mrs Gray was so much confused and bewildered by the events of the day, that she would hardly have been surprised to see the Queen with the crown on her head sitting there in the master's arm-chair, quite at home like, and holding the baby on one arm and the sceptre on the other; and Tom was of too phlegmatic a disposition to be surprised at anything. So they made no remark, and Mr Robins laid the baby, still asleep, in Bill's arms, and went away.

Such a beautiful, quiet September night, with great, soft stars overhead, and the scent of fallen leaves in the air; the path beneath his feet was soft with them, and as he passed under the elms which by daylight were a blaze of sunny gold, some leaves dropped gently on his head.

'To-morrow,' he said, 'I will bring little Zoe home, and I will let her mother—I will let Edith know that the child is with me, and that if she likes'– It needed but a word, he felt sure, to bring the mother to the baby, the daughter to her father.

He stood for a moment by the church-yard gate, close to the spot where that bitter, cruel parting had been, and fancied what the meeting would be. After all, what was his feeling for little Zoe, and his imagination of what his little grandchild would be to him in the future, to the delight of having Edith's arms round his neck and holding her to his heart once more?

'Edith,' he whispered softly, as he turned away; 'Edith, come home!'

'I wonder,' he said to Jane Sands that night; 'I wonder if you could find out an address for me?'

She was folding up the tablecloth, and she stopped with a puzzled look.

'An address? Whose?'

'Well,' he said, without looking at her, 'I fancy there are still some of the Blakes, (the word came out with a certain effort) 'living at Bilton, and perhaps you could find out from them the address I want; or, perhaps,' he added quickly, for she understood now, and eager words were on her lips, 'perhaps you know. There! never mind now; if you know, you can tell me to-morrow.'

CHAPTER VIII

Preparation—The Room Furnished—Mrs Gray at Work—The Baby Gone—The Gypsy Mother—The Gypsy's Story—A Foolish Fancy—Something Has Happened—The Real Baby

Worning very often brings other counsels, but this was not the case with Mr Robins, for when he got up next day he was more than ever resolved to carry out his intention of bringing little Zoe home, and letting her mother know that a welcome awaited her in her old home.

He had not slept very much during the night, for his mind had been too full of the change that was coming in his life, and of the difference that the presence of Edith and little Zoe would make in the dull, old house. Sad and worn and altered, was she! Ah! that would soon pass away with kindness and care and happiness, and the cough that had sounded so hollow and ominous should be nursed away, and Edith should be a girl again, a girl as she ought to be yet by right of her years; and those five years of suffering and estrangement should be altogether forgotten as if they had never been.

He went into the bedroom next his, that had been Edith's—that was to be Edith's again—and, looking round it, noticed with satisfaction that Jane had kept it just as it had been in the old days; and he pushed the bed a little to one side to make room for a cot to stand beside it, a cot which he remembered in the night as having stood for years in the lumber-room up in the roof, and which he now with much difficulty dragged out from behind some heavy boxes, and fitted together, wishing there had been time to give it a coat of paint, and yet glad, with a tremulous sort of gladness, that there was not, seeing that it would be wanted that very night.

And just then Jane Sands came up to call him to breakfast, and stood looking from the cot to her master's dusty coat, with such a look of delighted comprehension on her face, that the organist felt that no words were needed to prepare her for what was going to happen.

'I thought,' he said, 'it had better be brought down.'

'Where shall it go?' she asked.

'In Miss–in the room next mine,' he said, 'and it will want a good airing.'

'Shall I make up the bed too?' she asked.

'Yes, you may as well.'

'Oh, master,' she said, the tears shaking in her voice and shining in her eyes; 'will they be wanted soon? Will they, maybe, be wanted to-night?'

His own voice felt suspiciously shaky; his own eyes could not see the old cot, nor Jane's beaming face quite plainly, so he only gave a gruff assent and turned away.

'What a good, kind creature she is!' he thought. 'What a welcome she will give Edith and Edith's little Zoe!'

During the morning he heard her up in the room sweeping and scrubbing, as if for these five years it had been left a prey to dust and dirt; and when he went out after dinner to give a lesson at Bilton, she was still at it with an energy worthy of a woman, half her age.

That stupid little girl at Bilton, who generally found her music-lesson such an intolerable weariness to the flesh, and was conscious that it was no less so to her teacher, found the half-hour to-day quite pleasant. Mr Robins had never been so kind and cheerful, quite amusing, laughing at her mistakes, and allowing her to play just the things she knew best, and to get up in the middle of the lesson to go to the window and see a long procession of gypsy vans going by to Smithurst fair.

It was such a very beautiful day; perhaps it was this that produced such a good effect on the organist's temper. There had been a frost that morning, but it was not enough to strip the trees, but only to turn the elms a richer gold, and the beeches a warmer red, and the oaks a ruddier brown; while in the hedges the purple dogwood, and hawthorn, and bramble leaves made a wonderful variety of rich tints in the full bright sunshine, which set the birds twittering with a momentary delusion that it might be spring.

He did not come back over the hill, and past the Grays' cottage, for he was going to fetch the child that evening; but he came home by the road, meeting many more of those gypsy vans which had distracted his pupil's attention, and looking with kindliness on the swarthy men and bronze dark-eyed women, for the sake of little Zoe, who had been so often called the gypsy baby.

When he reached home he found the room prepared with all the care Jane Sands could lavish. He had thought when he went in that morning that it was just as Edith had left it, and all in the most perfect order; but now the room was a bower of daintiness and cleanliness, and all Edith's old treasures had been set out in the very order she used to arrange them—why! even her brush and comb were laid ready on the dressing-table, and a pair of slippers by the bedside, and a small bunch of autumn anemones and Czar violets was placed in a little glass beside her books. He smiled, but with tears in his eyes, as he saw all these loving preparations.

'Edith can hardly be here to-night,' he said to himself, 'but Zoe will.' And he smoothed the pillow of the cot close to the bedside, and drew the curtain more closely over its head.

He found his tea set ready for him when he came down, but Jane Sands had gone out, and he was rather glad of it, as she had watched him that morning with an eager expectant eye, and he did not know what to say to her. It would be easier when he brought the baby and actually put it into her arms.

The sun had set when he had finished tea, a blaze of splendour settling down into dull purple and dead orange, leaving a stripe of pale-green sky over the horizon, flecked with a few soft brown clouds tinged with red.

But envious night hastened to cover up and deaden the colours of the sky, and the almost equally gorgeous tints of tree and hedge; and, by the time Mr Robins reached the Grays' cottage, darkness had settled down as deep as on that evening four months ago, when he carried the baby and left it there.

Now, as then, the cottage door was open, and Mrs Gray sat at work with the candle close to her elbow, every now and then giving a long sniff or a sigh, that made the tallow candle flicker and tremble. He had almost forgotten her husband's accident in his absorption in the baby; but these sniffs recalled it to his mind, and he thought he would give them a helping hand while Gray was in the hospital.

'She has been kind to my little Zoe,' he thought, 'and I will not forget it in a hurry. She shall come and see the child whenever she likes; and Edith will be good to her, for she has been like a mother to the baby all these months.'

Close by where Mrs Gray sat he could see the foot of the old cradle and the rocker within reach of the woman's foot; but Zoe must be asleep, for there was no rocking necessary, and Mrs Gray did not turn from her work to look at the child, though she stopped from time to time to wipe her eyes on her apron.

'She is taken up with her husband,' he said to himself; 'it is as well that I am going to take the child away, as she will have no thought to give her now.'

And then he went into the cottage, with a tap on the open door to announce his presence.

'Good evening, Mrs Gray,' he said in a subdued voice, so as not to wake the baby. But he might have spared himself this precaution, for the next glance showed him that the cradle was empty.

'Bless you, Mr Robins,' the woman said, 'you give me quite a start, coming in so quiet like. But, there! I 'm all of a tremble, the leastest thing do terrify me. You might knock me down with a feather. First one thing and then another! The master yesterday and the baby to-day!'

'What!' he said, so sharp and sudden, that it stopped the flow of words for a moment. 'What do you mean! Is the baby in bed up-stairs? What's the matter? It's not the scarlatina? Not'–

'Bless you!' she said, 'why I thought you'd a-knowed. It ain't the scarlatina; the baby was as well and bonnie as ever when she went. She 've agone! her mother come and fetch her this very day, and took her right off. Ay! but she were pleased to see how the little thing had got on, and she said as she 'd never forget my kindness, and how she'd bring her to see me whenever she come this way. But, there! I do miss her terrible. Why, it's 'most worse than the master himself.'

The organist hardly listened to what she was saying after the fact of the mother having come and fetched her away. Edith had come for her baby! How had she known? Why had she done it to-day? Could Jane have let her know? And had she come so quickly to take the child herself to her old home? His first impulse was to turn and hasten home; perhaps Edith and Zoe were there already, and would find him absent. But he could not go without a word to Mrs Gray, who was wiping her eyes in her apron and unconsciously rocking the empty cradle.

'You will often see her,' he said consolingly; 'she will not be very far away.'

'Oh, I don't know about that; them gypsies go all over the place, up and down the country, and they don't always come back for the fairs; though she says as they don't often miss Smithurst.'

'Gypsies?' he said puzzled.

'Ay, the mother 's a gypsy sure enough, and I've said it all along, and the child's the very image of her; there wasn't no doubt, when one saw the two together, as they was mother and child.'

'Are you sure she was a gypsy?' He had often said in fun that Edith was a regular little gypsy, but he would never have thought that any one could really mistake her for one; and besides, Mrs Gray must have known Edith well enough at any rate by sight in the old days; and changed as she was, it was not beyond all recognition.

'Oh, there wasn't no mistaking, and the van as she belonged to waited just outside the village, for I went down along with her and seed it, painted yeller with red wheels. I knowed Zoe was gypsy born, for she'd one of them charms round her neck as I didn't meddle with, for they do say as there's a deal of power in them things, and that gypsies can't be drownded or ketch fevers and things as long as they keeps 'em.'