Zoe Part 3

'A baby,' she stammered, 'a baby----that my sister's taking care of.'

She was so red and confused that he felt sure she was saying what was not true, but he forgave her for the sake of the baby for whom he firmly believed the work was being done, and who, to be sure, when he saw it in Mrs Gray's arms, looked badly in want of clothes more fitted to its size than Bill's old pinafores.

He stood for a minute fingering the pink, spotted print of infantile simplicity of pattern, and listening to the quick click, click, of her needle as it flew in and out; but it was not till he had turned away and was half out of the kitchen, that she began a request that had been on the tip of her tongue all the time, but which she had not ventured to bring out while he stood at the table.

'I was going to ask--if you 'd no objection--seeing that they're no good to any one'----

Now it was coming out, and he turned with an encouraging smile:

'Well, what is it?'

'There are some old baby-clothes put away in a drawer up-stairs. They 're rough dried, and I've kept an eye on them, and took them out now and then to see as the moth didn't get in them'----

'Yes?'

'Well, sir--this baby that I'm working for is terrible short of clothes, and I thought I might take a few of them for her'----

She did not look at him once as she spoke, or she might have been encouraged by the look on his face, which softened into a very benignant, kindly expression.

'To be sure! to be sure!' he said. 'I 've no objection to your taking some of them for the baby--at your sister's.' He spoke the last words with some meaning, and she looked quickly up at him and dropped her work as if tumultuous words were pressing to be spoken, but stopped them with an effort and went on with her work, only with heightened colour and trembling fingers.

She was not slow to avail herself of his permission, for that very night, before she went to bed, he heard her in the next room turning out the drawer where the old baby-clothes had been stored away ever since little Edith had discarded them for clothes of a larger size.

And next morning she was up betimes, starching and ironing and goffering dainty little frills with such a look of love and satisfaction on her face, that he had not the heart to hint that she had availed herself somewhat liberally of his permission, and that less dainty care and crispness might do equally well for the baby, bundled up in Mrs Gray's kind but crumpling arms, to take the place of Bill's faded pinafore.

That afternoon he purposely took his way home over the hillside and down the lane by the Grays' cottage, with a conviction that he should see the baby tricked out in some of those frilled and tucked little garments over which Jane Sands had lavished so much time and attention that morning. But to his surprise he saw her in much the same costume as before, only the pinafore this time was washed-out lavender instead of pink, and, as she was in Bill's arms, and he, as the youngest of the family, being inexperienced in nursing, a more crumpled effect was produced than his mother had done. He could only conclude that Jane had not found time yet to take the things, or that Mrs Gray was reserving them for a more showy occasion.

But he found Jane just returning as he came up to his house, and she looked far more hot and dusty than the short walk up the lane to the Grays accounted for, but with a beaming look on her kind face that had not been there for many a day.

'Well,' he said, 'Jane, have you been to Stokeley?'

'Yes,' she said, 'and I took the things you were good enough to say the baby might have. They _were_ pleased.'

She, too, spoke with a curious meaning in her voice and manner which somehow faded when she saw the want of response in his face. Indeed there was a very distinct feeling of disappointment and irritation in his feelings. For after all those clothes had actually gone to some other baby. Well! well! it is a selfish world after all, and each of us has his own interests which take him up and engross him. No doubt this little common child at Stokeley was all in all to Jane Sands, and she was glad enough of a chance to pick all the best out of those baby clothes up-stairs that he remembered his young wife preparing so lovingly for her baby and his. It gave him quite a pang to think of some little Sands or Jenkins adorned with these tucks he had seen run so carefully and frills sewn so daintily. He had evidently given Jane credit for a great deal more unselfishness and devotion to him and his than she really felt, for she had all the time been busy working and providing for her own people, when he had thought she was full of consideration for Edith's child. Pshaw! he had to pull himself together and take himself to task. For even in these few days he had grown to think of that little brown-faced, dark-eyed baby as his grandchild, instead of Martin Blake's brat. Insensibly and naturally, too, the child had brought back the memory of its mother, first as baby, then as sweet and winsome little child; then as bright, wilful, coaxing girl, and, lastly, unless he kept his thoughts well in check, there followed on these brighter memories the shadow of a white worn woman under the yew-tree in the churchyard, and of a voice that said 'Father.'

That uninteresting child at Stokeley apparently required a great supply of clothes, for Jane Sands was hard at work again that evening, and when he came in from the choir practice, he heard her singing over her work as she used to do in old days, and when he went in for his pipe, she looked up with a smile that seemed to expect a sympathetic response, and made no effort to conceal the work as she had done the day before.

He stood morosely by the fireplace for a minute, shaking the ashes out of his pipe.

'You're very much taken up with that baby,' he said crossly; and she looked up quickly, thinking that perhaps he had a hole in his stocking, or a b.u.t.ton off his shirt to complain of, as a consequence of her being engrossed in other work. But he went on without looking at her, and apparently deeply absorbed in getting an obstinate bit of ash out of the pipe bowl.

'There's a child at Mrs Gray's they say is very short of clothes. That baby, you know'----

'That baby that was found in the garden,' Jane said in such a curiously uninterested tone of voice that he could not resist glancing round at her; but she was just then engaged in that mysterious process of 'stroking the gathers,' which the intelligent feminine reader will understand requires a certain attention. If this indifference were a.s.sumed, Jane Sands was a much better actor and a more deceptive character than he had believed possible; if she were too entirely absorbed in her own people to give even a thought to her young mistress's baby, she was not the Jane Sands he thought he had known for the last twenty years. The only alternative was that she knew nothing about the baby having been left on his door-step, nor of the meeting with his daughter in the churchyard which had preceded it.

What followed convinced him that this was the case, though it also a little favoured the other hypothesis of her selfish absorption in her own people.

'Perhaps,' he said, 'you could look out some of those baby things up-stairs if there are any left.'

'What? I beg your pardon, sir. What did you say?'

'Those baby clothes up-stairs that you gave to your sister's baby.'

'Those!' she said, with a strange light of indignation in her eyes, more even than you would have expected in the most grasping and greedy person on a proposal that something should be s.n.a.t.c.hed from her hungry maw and given to another. 'Those! Little Miss Edith's things! that her own mother made and that I 've kept so careful all these years in case Miss Edith's own should need them!'

You see she forgot in the excitement of the moment that these were the very things she had been giving away so freely to that common little child at Stokeley; but women are so inconsistent.

'Well?' he said, as her breath failed her in this unusual torrent of remonstrance. 'Why not?'

'For a little gypsy child! a foundling that n.o.body knows anything about! Don't do it, master, don't! I couldn't abear to see it. Here, let me get a bit of print and flannel and run together a few things for the child. I 'd rather do it a hundred times than that those things should be given away--and just now too!'

It was very plain to Mr Robins that she did not know; but all the same he was half inclined to point out that it was not a much more outrageous thing to bestow these cherished garments on a foundling than on her sister's baby; but she was evidently so unconscious of her inconsistency in the matter that he did not know how to suggest it to her.

'I 'm going into Stokeley to-morrow,' she went on, 'and if you liked I could get some print and make it a few frocks. I saw some very neat at fourpence three-farthings that would wash beautiful, and a good stout flannel at elevenpence. Oh! not like that,' she said as he laid a finger on some soft Saxony flannel with a pink edge which lay on the table. 'Something more serviceable for a poor person's child.'

Well, perhaps it was better that Jane should not know who the baby was of whom she spoke so contemptuously. A baby was none the better or healthier for being dressed up in frills and lace; and Mrs Gray was a thoroughly clean motherly woman, and would do well by the child.

All the same, when Jane came back from Stokeley next day and unfolded the parcel she had brought from the draper's there, he could not help feeling that that somewhat dingy lavender, though it might wash like a rag, was, to say the least, uninteresting, and the texture of the flannel, even to his undiscriminating eye, was a trifle rough and coa.r.s.e for baby limbs.

He knew nothing (how should he?) of the cut and make of baby clothes, but somehow, these, under Jane's scissors and needle, did not take such attractive proportions as those she had prepared for the other baby; nor did the st.i.tches appear so careful and minute, though Jane's worst enemy, if she had any, could not have accused her of putting bad work even into the hem of a duster, let alone a baby's frock. He also noticed that, industriously as she worked at the lavender print, her ardour was not sufficient to last beyond bedtime, and that, when the clock struck ten, her work was put away, without any apparent reluctance, even when, to all appearances, it was so near completion that anyone would have given the requisite ten minutes just from the mere desire of finishing.

That Sunday afternoon, when the curious name Zoe, sounding across the church in the strange clergyman's voice, startled the organist, who had not expected the christening to take place that day, one of the distracting thoughts which made him make so many mistakes in the music, was wondering what Jane Sands would think of the name, and whether it would rouse any suspicion in her mind and enlighten her a little as to who the baby at Mrs Gray's really was. The name was full of memories and a.s.sociations to him; surely it must be also a little to Jane Sands.

But of all Sunday afternoons in the year, she had chosen this to go over to Stokeley church. Why, parson and clerk were hardly more regular in their attendance than Jane Sands as a rule; it was almost an unheard-of thing for her seat to be empty. But to-day it was so, and the row of little boys whom her gentle presence generally awed into tolerable behaviour, indulged unchecked in all the ingenious naughtiness that infant mind and body are capable of in church.

She came in rather late with his tea, apologising for having kept him waiting.

'It was christening Sunday,' she said, and then she looked at him rather wistfully.

Perhaps she has heard, he thought; perhaps the neighbours have told her the name, and she is beginning to guess.

'And the baby has been called'---- she hesitated and glanced timidly at him.

'Well?' he said encouragingly, 'what is the name?'

'Edith,' she answered, 'was one name.'

Pshaw! it was the baby at her sister's she was talking of all the time!

He turned irritably away.

'He can't bear to hear the name, even now; or, perhaps, he's cross at being kept waiting for tea,' thought Jane Sands.

CHAPTER VI.

The Good Baby--Mr Robins Comes and Goes--A Secret Power--Mr Robins Happy--A Naughty Tiresome Gal!--The Gypsy Child