Painfully and wearily he toiled back to Downside; he seemed to have no spirit left to contend against even such trifling things as mud and inequalities in the road, and when a bramble straying from the hedge caught his coat and tore it, he could almost have cried in feeble vexation of spirit. Downside street was all dark and quiet, but from the organist's house a light shone out from the open door and down the garden path, making a patch of light on the wet road.
Some one stood peering out into the darkness, and, at the sound of his dragging, stumbling footsteps, Jane Sands ran down to the gate. The long waiting had made her anxious, for she was breathless and trembling with excitement.
'Where have you been?' she said; 'we got so frightened. Why are you so late? Oh, dearie me!' as she caught sight of his face. 'You 're ill! Something has happened! There, come in, doee, now; you look fit to drop!'
He pushed by her almost roughly into the house, and dropped down wearily into the arm-chair. He was too worn out and exhausted to notice anything, even the warmth and comfort of the bright fire and the supper ready on the table. He tossed his soaked hat on the ground, and leaning his elbows on his knees and his head on his hands, sat bowed down with the feeling of utter wretchedness.
Day after day, night after night, till his life's end, plenty and comfort and neatness and respectability and warmth in dull monotony; while outside somewhere in the cold and rain, in poverty and want and wretchedness, wandered Edith with the wailing baby in her arms.
'You can go to bed,' he said to Jane Sands; 'I don't want any supper.'
She drew back and went softly out of the room, but some one else was standing there, looking down at the bowed white head with eyes fuller even of pity and tears than Jane's had been; and then she, too, left the room, and with a raised finger to Jane, who was waiting in the passage, she went up-stairs and, as if the way were well known to her, to the little room which had been got ready so uselessly for the organist's daughter.
There, sheltered by the bed-curtain, was the cot where Zoe was to have lain, and there, wonderful to relate, a child's dark head might be seen, deep in the soft pillow, deeper in soft sleep.
And then this strangely presuming intruder in the organist's house softly took up the sleeping child, and wrapping a shawl round it, carried it, still sleeping, downstairs, the dark lashes resting on the round cheek flushed with sleep and of a fairer tint than gypsy Zoe's, and the rosy mouth half-open.
The organist still sat with his head in his hands, and did not stir as she entered, not even when she came and knelt down on the hearth in front of him.