“The child?” asked Emma, puzzled, for a moment before they had been speaking of Alderman Turnbull, who had just been elected mayor, a man well past middle age.
“The boy, ma’am,” said the man, suddenly remembering what it was that he had thought he would say to her. “I want to ask your help for him. I badly need your assistance in a project dear to my heart.”
Emma was astonished, touched, curious, enormously flattered. “What boy, Mr. Dean? I shall gladly do all in my power.”
“Job Mooring, ma’am, whom I have persuaded your good brother to take as his apprentice. I believe him capable of becoming an excellent craftsman. Indeed I believe that with our encouragement and affection, yours, ma’am, and Mr. Peabody’s and my own, he will become a great man. His story is a tragic one. Let me tell it to you.”
He told her all he could about Job and she listened rigidly, her eyes on her plate. When he had finished she asked in a cold, remote voice, “Do you consider those little toys he makes show promise?”
“Ma’am, I consider them to show genius,” he said gently.
There was a silence and he waited anxiously. She did not know that he had heard that she had burned the little birds. If she would now of her own will tell him about it he could not think of anything that would make him happier. But the silence lengthened and she said nothing. His heart sank. He waited for another minute, then changed the subject with as much cheerfulness as he could muster.
“Do you number Miss Montague among your circle of acquaintances, ma’am?” he asked.
“I have not that pleasure,” said Emma, but still she did not raise her eyes from her plate. She had a feeling that if she did the Dean would see in them that she had burned the birds. And he must never know. “With our encouragement,” he had said, linking her with himself, and now he was taking it for granted that she and Miss Montague moved in the same social circle. He knew she was a lady. He was a man who could recognize gentility when he saw it. He was a perfect gentleman.
“I wish, ma’am, that you could know her,” said the Dean. “But she is an invalid now. I believe that she would take it very kindly were you to call upon her. I fear that life can be lonely in the latter years.”
The idea of loneliness in connection with Mary Montague was laughable and the Dean had an uncomfortable feeling that the strict veracity he so much prized was not the hallmark of this conversation. He scarcely knew what he was saying. In his heavy fatigue he felt like a top-heavy bumblebee, his blunderings past his control. He could only put his trust in those invisible tides that do sometimes lift and carry a man when his own sense of direction is entirely lost.
“I will do so most gladly,” said Emma. “As you say, life can be lonely for the old.”
They talked platitudes for a while and then the Dean rose to go. “I can rely on you, ma’am?” he asked anxiously as he said good-by. “You will in your woman’s kindness do what you can for that boy? And you will not forget Miss Montague?”
Emma was at a loss to understand his anxiety but was immensely flattered by his reliance upon her. It meant, she was sure, that he had taken a fancy to her. “You can rely on me, Mr. Dean,” she said earnestly.
At the parlor door, just as he was leaving her, he suddenly said, “There is another matter, ma’am, in which you can help me. When you were a little girl was there anything you particularly longed for? There is a child to whom I should like to give a birthday gift. She has, I think, the usual toys. I know she has a hobbyhorse. I am at a loss to know what to give her. You, ma’am, will be able to advise me.”
Emma cast her mind back over the years. She thought a little and then she said shyly, for she was speaking of a deep symbolical longing that she had never disclosed to a living soul. “I remember that I longed for a little red umbrella.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said the Dean. “I am much obliged to you.”
He went out into the little passage, where Polly gave him his cloak and hat and stick. He said a few words to her and went out into the street, into the cold mist that was swirling up from the river. From the doorstep she watched, for she did not like to see him go. After a few moments the mist seemed to come down like a wall, and he was on the other side. She came back into the house to clear away the tea, oddly troubled. The parlor door was open and looking in she saw Emma standing by the fire. Her back was to the door but it appeared to Polly she was weeping.
“My!” thought Polly, and went noiselessly back to the kitchen without clearing away. Making up the fire she began to sing under her breath, for oddly enough the sight of Emma weeping had done away with her sense of trouble. Instinct told her Emma’s tears would do a power of good.
2.
There was an umbrella shop in the market place. The Dean opened the watch that was now so valued a possession and saw that he had time to go there before calling on Miss Montague. He went down Angel Lane, turned toward the steps and went slowly down them. Halfway down he felt suddenly quite extraordinarily ill. During the last year or so he had become accustomed to sudden attacks of giddiness and malaise, unpleasant while they lasted but soon over, and to constant fatigue. But this was something different. There was a sudden constriction of the throat, a drumlike thundering of the heart like the sounding of an alarm, a queer sense as though his whole body were in mortal terror. Not himself but his body. He himself felt curiously detached, even elated, though the swirling mist seemed choking him and he found he had sat down suddenly on the steps. He had a brief vision of himself sitting on the steps in his top hat, as vivid as though he looked at himself from outside himself, and its comicality twisted his grim face into a quirk of amusement. Then it passed in a roaring blackness. Then that too passed and the gray mist came slowly back and he was still sitting on the steps in his top hat. I’ve been here for hours, he thought, felt for his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face. Then with great difficulty he took out his watch, opened it with fumbling fingers and looked at the flower-encircled dial. Only eight minutes had passed since he had last looked at it in Angel Lane.
“Most extraordinary!” he ejaculated, and feeling disinclined for movement sat on where he was. He felt curiously peaceful and exceedingly happy; indeed happiness was mounting in his spirit in much the same way as a short time ago panic had been mounting in his body. Though happiness was a poor word for that which was rising within him. Light, he thought. Light. That was a poor word too but there was no other. His consciousness moved out from himself and he became aware of the city. It was extraordinary how deeply he had come to love it during the ten years that he had lived here. Behind him, he knew, the Cathedral rose into the sky, the mist wrapped about its towers. Below him there was a faint rosy glow in the grayness, and he guessed that the shops in the market place had lit their lamps. The rumble of wheels on cobblestones, the sound of children’s voices, came up to him very faintly. He prayed for God’s blessing on the city and then he remembered Bella’s red umbrella. I must get it at once, he thought. Anything that has to be done must be done quickly.
With the help of his stick and with one hand on the wall, he found he could get up. He descended the steps with caution, but down in the market place he felt almost himself again. Joshua Appleby’s bookshop was lighted up and he could distinguish the books inside, their colored ranks glowing in the soft lamplight. There is no more satisfactory sight than a lighted bookshop in the dusk, and his heart glowed. He passed St. Peter’s church and looked up the lane to the trees of Mr. Penny’s garden. Behind their tangle he fancied he saw a light gleaming. Job was probably making toast. His ankle, Polly had whispered to him in the passage, was mending nicely now that Doctor Jenkins had attended to it. The messenger he had sent to Willowthorn had brought back a grateful little note from Ruth Newman. If she was not yet installed she would be in a day or two.
He crossed the market place to the little old umbrella shop, tucked in between Catchpole and fishmonger and Mrs. Martin’s bakery. He had never been inside it but he had always l
iked the look of its small bulging bow window, and the little umbrella, made of tin and painted in stripes of red and blue, that swung like an inn sign over the shop door.
The proprietor of the shop was Miss Bertha Throstle. When the Dean came in she had just clambered up on a chair to light the oil lamp that hung over her counter. Too intent upon her task to look around she murmured, “Just a minute, dear,” and went on with what she was doing. Everything she did now needed a bit of concentration, for though hale and hearty for her age she was eighty. She was thin and small but also round because of the number of petticoats she wore as protection against the drafts of the shop. Her scarlet tippet was crossed over her chest and a large black bonnet almost extinguished her tiny crumpled face. Her eyes were black and beady and she needed no glasses. Her shop was scarcely bigger than a large cupboard and crammed with umbrellas of every size and shape, from large green carriage umbrellas to dainty parasols with silk fringes. The counter was to scale, reaching no higher than Miss Throstle’s waist.
“There now, dear,” she said, her task completed, and turned around on her chair to survey the newcomer. When she saw who it was she was astonished but not at all flustered. Miss Throstle had never been flustered, and never would be. “Well!” she said in her tiny piping voice. “Who’d have thought it? Good afternoon, sir. I took you for Matty Wilcox come for her pa’s umbrella.”
“Allow me, ma’am,” said the Dean, holding out his hand to help her down.
She took it and climbed off the chair with surprising nimbleness. “Turning chilly,” she said, when she had bustled around behind her counter. “What can I do for you, sir?”
“I want an umbrella for a little girl,” said the Dean. “A scarlet umbrella.”
“What age would she be, sir?” asked Miss Throstle, her head on one side like a bird listening for the worm, her bright dark eyes on the Dean. He felt she was summing him up pretty shrewdly. He on his side knew her to be sound as a nut and kind to the kernel of her. He knew this instinctive kindness of the good countrywoman. Ruth Newman had it. They were kind as the bird sings or the fish swims, for they seemed not to have shared in the complications of the primeval fall. This kindness was a lesser thing than the love of a Mary Montague, because not willed or fought for, but it had the freshness of all natural beauty and was as balm to him here among the umbrellas.
“I think perhaps four years old,” said the Dean. “Or five. I am not knowledgeable about the ages of small children. She has blue eyes and yellow curls.”
“The pretty dear!” said Miss Throstle. “I should suggest an en-tout-cas, a parasol and umbrella combined. You know what a child is with a new toy, sir, they can’t be parted from it, and wet or fine she’ll be able to take an en-tout-cas out walking. I’ve a scarlet one here, very tasty. And a green and a rose pink.”
She laid all three on the counter, and then opened them for the Dean’s inspection. They were so small that they were like flowers. The scarlet one had a handle shaped like a poppy head and a silken fringe. The pink had a shepherdess’s crook for handle and was tied with a large pink bow. The third was a bright emerald green and its handle was a yellow and green parrot. In the soft lamplight, against the background of the chill gray day, they were infinitely gay. How could one choose? Under each one of them Bella would look equally enchanting. “I’ll take all three,” said the Dean. He spoke with the abandoned desperation of the true lover and it was as a lover, a creature not quite in possession of his proper senses, that Miss Throstle dealt with him.
“Now, sir, the little puss scarcely needs three,” she said. “You must not spoil the child, sir. She’s had the cuckoo clock.”
The Dean was startled by this, unaware to what extent his latest idiosyncrasies were the talk of his Cathedral city, but his chief concern was with a slight suggestion of kindly asperity in Miss Throstle’s voice.
“I do not think Bella is an acquisitive child, ma’am,” he pleaded. “A high-spirited child, with an artist’s eye for what pleases her taste, not acquisitive.”
“A dear little girl,” said Miss Throstle soothingly. “But if I may advise you I should say just the one, sir. Children grow quickly. A year from now she’ll be needing a larger one.”
“Then I’ll take the crimson en-tout-cas, if you please, ma’am,” said the Dean. But Miss Throstle did not seem anxious for him to buy the crimson. Instead she held the green one up under the lamp, so that the light shone through its silken shimmer like the sun through beech leaves. “You think she would prefer the green?” he asked humbly.
“It’s the green she’s after, sir,” said Miss Throstle. “Whenever her nurse brings her this way she’s flat against my window as a winkle to a rock, pointing at the parrot, and that persistent, sir, that Nurse has a lot of trouble. ‘Best take her along the other side of the market,’ I says to Nurse, and Nurse she says she does that, but as soon as her back’s turned for a moment Miss Bella she’s across in a twinkling of an eye, right under the horses’ feet. It’s a pretty green, sir, and as you see it has a little yellow tassel.”
“Thank you, I’ll take it,” said the Dean. “How much do I owe you, ma’am?”
The en-tout-cas was paid for and Miss Throstle wrapped it up in soft green tissue paper, and then in sober brown paper to make it a more suitable object for the Dean to carry across the market place. Then it was time to say good-by but each was reluctant to do so. Miss Throstle was amazed that the Dean should be so feared in the city. She was not afraid of him. Looking up at him she felt much as she did when looking up at the Cathedral. Here was a rock! He made her feel as though she had firm ground under her feet. Hale and hearty though she was, being eighty did at times make her feel a little insecure. The Dean was thinking how many little tucked-away shops there were in the city that he had never entered, kept by men and women whom to his eternal loss he would now never know. His tall hat in his left hand he held out his right to Miss Throstle across the counter. “I am much obliged to you for your assistance. Much obliged. God bless you, ma’am.”
He bowed to her, replaced his hat and went out into the gathering dusk with the little umbrella tucked under his arm. Fifteen minutes later, still carrying it, he was in Miss Montague’s drawing room. He had not been there since that day when they had talked of the nature of love. The lamp was lighted and the curtains drawn against the chill mist, the lovely room warm and sweet-scented with chrysanthemums and burning apple logs. The two friends greeted each other with delight and satisfaction, for to both it seemed a long time since they had been together.
“I have something to show you, ma’am,” said the Dean, when the correct courtesies had been exchanged and he was seated in the comfortable armchair opposite Miss Montague, the little parcel on his knee.
“Where did you catch that cold?” she asked.
“It is not a cold, ma’am, merely a slight hoarseness due to the inclement weather.”
“It has been remarkably inclement,” agreed Miss Montague. She did not look at him again. For the moment she could not, so violent was her sense of panic. He did not look any more ill than he had looked for the past year or so, but there was something new in his face this afternoon. To her fancy a shadow lay upon it, yet not from any inward melancholy. It was like the shadow of a wing and behind it she believed he was hiding an awed if profound joy. While she tried to quiet the panic, at her age and with her faith a thing both selfish and ridiculous, she watched his large clumsy hands fumbling at the brown paper and string. Their slowness would have reduced Elaine almost to screaming point. To Miss Montague they restored quietness. She was slow, too, now that she was old. With time a thing so soon to be finished with, it was right to let the last strands pass very slowly through the fingers. One had liked time.
“There, ma’am!” said the Dean.
“What an exquisite little umbrella,” said Miss Montague.
“It is not an umbrella, ma’am. It is an en-tout-cas.”
“For Bella?”
“Now ho
w did you know about Bella?”
“Sarah knows everything, and sometimes out of her vast store she shares a few crumbs of knowledge with me. I am so delighted about Bella. I did not know you loved children. Is it not odd that I should not have known?”
“It was not a thing that I had mentioned to you, ma’am.”
She smiled. There was so much that he had not mentioned to her and yet that she knew. Aloud she said, “Are you glad that I persuaded you to take a little joy?”
“Yes, ma’am, but the complications, and indeed the anxieties, have been and are very great.”
“Naturally,” said Miss Montague. “If you turn for your joy to the intractable and explosive stuff of human nature it’s in for a penny, in for a pound. The contemplation of sunsets and vegetable matter has its serene pleasure, and involves no personal exertion, but that I think was not what you wanted in old age?”
“No, it was not. And I am not complaining. But I should like to tell you of these children. They all seem children. Some people, ma’am, never seem to reach maturity.”
“Few grow up in this world,” agreed Miss Montague. “We should all like each other better if we could realize that. But tell me another day. You have no voice tonight.”
“I must tell you now, ma’am,” barked the Dean urgently. “These children need your prayers.”
Miss Montague saw that he wanted to tell her and yielded. She sat without movement or comment while he told her of Job and Polly, of Emma and Bella, Keziah and Albert Lee, Mr. Penny, Ruth Newman and Miss Throstle. Her listening quietness was deeply receptive and Adam Ayscough felt as always that what he told her was not only safe but likely to undergo a sea change. When he had finished she said, “I shall be glad to know Emma Peabody. I am glad she is coming to see me. I have always wanted to know her.”
“Then why did you not invite her, ma’am?”