The Complete Short Stories of Lucy Maud Montgomery. Lucy Maud Montgomery
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she had left the kitchen window open, so that she could hear the baby if it awakened and cried. Miss Rosetta sang happily as she picked her currants. For the first time since Charlotte had married Jacob Wheeler Miss Rosetta felt really happy — so happy that at there was no room in her heart for bitterness. In fancy she looked forward to the coming years, and saw Camilla Jane growing up into girlhood, fair and lovable.
“She’ll be a beauty,” reflected Miss Rosetta complacently. “Jane was a handsome girl. She shall always be dressed as nice as I can manage it, and I’ll get her an organ, and have her take painting and music lessons. Parties, too! I’ll give her a real coming-out party when she’s eighteen and the very prettiest dress that’s to be had. Dear me, I can hardly wait for her to grow up, though she’s sweet enough now to make one wish she could stay a baby forever.”
When Miss Rosetta returned to the kitchen, her eyes fell on an empty cradle. Camilla Jane was gone!
Miss Rosetta promptly screamed. She understood at a glance what had happened. Six months’ old babies do not get out of their cradles and disappear through closed doors without any assistance.
“Charlotte has been here,” gasped Miss Rosetta. “Charlotte has stolen Camilla Jane! I might have expected it. I might have known when I heard that story about her buying muslin and flannel. It’s just like Charlotte to do such an underhand trick. But I’ll go after her! I’ll show her! She’ll find out she has got Rosetta Ellis to deal with and no Wheeler!”
Like a frantic creature and wholly forgetting that her hair was in curl-papers, Miss Rosetta hurried up the hill and down the shore road to the Wheeler Farm — a place she had never visited in her life before.
The wind was offshore and only broke the bay’s surface into long silvery ripples, and sent sheeny shadows flying out across it from every point and headland, like transparent wings.
The little gray house, so close to the purring waves that in storms their spray splashed over its very doorstep, seemed deserted. Miss Rosetta pounded lustily on the front door. This producing no result, she marched around to the back door and knocked. No answer. Miss Rosetta tried the door. It was locked.
“Guilty conscience,” sniffed Miss Rosetta. “Well, I shall stay here until I see that perfidious Charlotte, if I have to camp in the yard all night.”
Miss Rosetta was quite capable of doing this, but she was spared the necessity; walking boldly up to the kitchen window, and peering through it, she felt her heart swell with anger as she beheld Charlotte sitting calmly by the table with Camilla Jane on her knee. Beside her was a befrilled and bemuslined cradle, and on a chair lay the garments in which Miss Rosetta had dressed the baby. It was clad in an entirely new outfit, and seemed quite at home with its new possessor. It was laughing and cooing, and making little dabs at her with its dimpled hands.
“Charlotte Wheeler,” cried Miss Rosetta, rapping sharply on the windowpane. “I’ve come for that child! Bring her out to me at once — at once, I say! How dare you come to my house and steal a baby? You’re no better than a common burglar. Give me Camilla Jane, I say!”
Charlotte came over to the window with the baby in her arms and triumph glittering in her eyes.
“There is no such child as Camilla Jane here,” she said. “This is Barbara Jane. She belongs to me.”
With that Mrs. Wheeler pulled down the shade.
Miss Rosetta had to go home. There was nothing else for her to do. On her way she met Mr. Patterson and told him in full the story of her wrongs. It was all over Avonlea by night, and created quite a sensation. Avonlea had not had such a toothsome bit of gossip for a long time.
Mrs. Wheeler exulted in the possession of Barbara Jane for six weeks, during which Miss Rosetta broke her heart with loneliness and longing, and meditated futile plots for the recovery of the baby. It was hopeless to think of stealing it back or she would have tried to. The hired man at the Wheeler place reported that Mrs. Wheeler never left it night or day for a single moment. She even carried it with her when she went to milk the cows.
“But my turn will come,” said Miss Rosetta grimly. “Camilla Jane is mine, and if she was called Barbara for a century it wouldn’t alter that fact! Barbara, indeed! Why not have called her Methusaleh and have done with it?”
One afternoon in October, when Miss Rosetta was picking her apples and thinking drearily about lost Camilla Jane, a woman came running breathlessly down the hill and into the yard. Miss Rosetta gave an exclamation of amazement and dropped her basket of apples. Of all incredible things! The woman was Charlotte — Charlotte who had never set foot on the grounds of the Ellis cottage since her marriage ten years ago, Charlotte, bareheaded, wild-eyed, distraught, wringing her hands and sobbing.
Miss Rosetta flew to meet her.
“You’ve scalded Camilla Jane to death!” she exclaimed. “I always knew you would — always expected it!”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, come quick, Rosetta!” gasped Charlotte. “Barbara Jane is in convulsions and I don’t know what to do. The hired man has gone for the doctor. You were the nearest, so I came to you. Jenny White was there when they came on, so I left her and ran. Oh, Rosetta, come, come, if you have a spark of humanity in you! You know what to do for convulsions — you saved the Ellis baby when it had them. Oh, come and save Barbara Jane!”
“You mean Camilla Jane, I presume?” said Miss Rosetta firmly, in spite of her agitation.
For a second Charlotte Wheeler hesitated. Then she said passionately: “Yes, yes, Camilla Jane — any name you like! Only come.”
Miss Rosetta went, and not a moment too soon, either. The doctor lived eight miles away and the baby was very bad. The two women and Jenny White worked over her for hours. It was not until dark, when the baby was sleeping soundly and the doctor had gone, after telling Miss Rosetta that she had saved the child’s life, that a realization of the situation came home to them.
“Well,” said Miss Rosetta, dropping into an armchair with a long sigh of weariness, “I guess you’ll admit now, Charlotte Wheeler, that you are hardly a fit person to have charge of a baby, even if you had to go and steal it from me. I should think your conscience would reproach you — that is, if any woman who would marry Jacob Wheeler in such an underhanded fashion has a—”
“I — I wanted the baby,” sobbed Charlotte, tremulously. “I was so lonely here. I didn’t think it was any harm to take her, because Jane gave her to me in her letter. But you have saved her life, Rosetta, and you — you can have her back, although it will break my heart to give her up. But, oh, Rosetta, won’t you let me come and see her sometimes? I love her so I can’t bear to give her up entirely.”
“Charlotte,” said Miss Rosetta firmly, “the most sensible thing for you to do is just to come back with the baby. You are worried to death trying to run this farm with the debt Jacob Wheeler left on it for you. Sell it, and come home with me. And we’ll both have the baby then.”
“Oh, Rosetta, I’d love to,” faltered Charlotte. “I’ve — I’ve wanted to be good friends with you again so much. But I thought you were so hard and bitter you’d never make up.”
“Maybe I’ve talked too much,” conceded Miss Rosetta, “but you ought to know me well enough to know I didn’t mean a word of it. It was your never saying anything, no matter what I said, that riled me up so bad. Let bygones be bygones, and come home, Charlotte.”
“I will,” said Charlotte resolutely, wiping away her tears. “I’m sick of living here and putting up with hired men. I’ll be real glad to go home, Rosetta, and that’s the truth. I’ve had a hard enough time. I s’pose you’ll say I deserved it; but I was fond of Jacob, and—”
“Of course, of course. Why shouldn’t you be?” said Miss Rosetta briskly. “I’m sure Jacob Wheeler was a good enough soul, if he was a little slack-twisted. I’d like to hear anybody say a word against him in my presence. Look at that blessed child, Charlotte.