The Changeling

"Thank you, Sir Robert," she answered humbly. She trusted in that square-jawed, beetle-browed man; yet she was humiliated. "I certainly confide in you."

He got up. "Then I will waste your time no longer. You are always at work – I see and read and hear – always at work – good works – good works."

Her lips parted, but she was silent. Did he mean a reflection on the one work that had not been quite so good? But he was gone.

The advertisement was repeated in all the papers. England, Scotland, Ireland, the Colonies, knew about this adoption, and the anxiety of the mother to recover her son.

At this stage of the investigation, the subject began to be generally talked about. The newspapers had leading articles on the general subject of adoption. It was an opportunity for the display of classical scholarship; of mediæval scholarship; of historical scholarship; cases of pretence, of substitution, are not uncommon. There are noble houses about which things are whispered – things which must not be bruited abroad. The subject of adoption, open or concealed, proved fertile and fruitful to the leader-writer. One man, for instance, projected himself in imagination into the situation, and speculated on the effect which would be produced on a young man of culture and fine feeling, of finding out, at five and twenty, that he belonged to quite another family, with quite another set of traditions, prejudices, and ideas. Thus a young man born in the purple, or near it; brought up in great respect for birth, connections, and family history, with a strong prejudice in favour of an aristocratic caste; suddenly discovers that his people belong to the lowest grade of those who can call themselves of the middle class, and that he has no kind of connection with the folk to whom he has always believed himself attached. What would be the effect upon an educated and a sensitive mind? What would be the effect upon his affections? How would he regard his new mother – probably a vulgar old woman – or his new brothers and sisters – probably preposterous in their vulgarity? What effect would the discovery have upon his views of life? What upon his politics? What upon his opinions as to small trade, and the mean and undignified and sordid employments by which the bulk of mankind have to live?

At dinner-tables people talked about this mysterious adoption. What could it mean? Why did not the lady come forward? Was it, as some of the papers argued, clearly a case of fraudulent substitution? If not, why did she not come forward? She was dead, perhaps. If so, why did not some one else come forward? If, however, it really was a case of substitution, then the position was intelligible. For instance, the case quoted the day before yesterday by the Daily News; that was, surely, a similar case. And so on; all the speakers wise with the knowledge derived from yesterday's paper. Are we sufficiently grateful to our daily papers and our leader-writers, for providing us with subjects of conversation?

The subject was handled with great vigour one night at Lady Woodroffe's own table. Sir Robert was present; he argued, with ability, that there was no reason to suppose any deception at all; that in his view, the lady had adopted the child, and had resolved to bring up the child in complete ignorance of its relatives, who were presumably of the lowlier sort; that she had seen no reason to take her servants into her confidence, or her friends; and that she now saw no reason to let the young man learn who his real relations were. And he drew a really admirable sketch of the disgust with which the young man would receive his new cousins. Lady Woodroffe, while this agreeable discussion was continued, sat at the head of her table, calm, pale, and collected.

Then there appeared a third advertisement. It was just like the second, except that it now raised the reward to ten thousand guineas. It also included the fact that the child had been received at the Birmingham station by an Indian ayah.

This advertisement caused searchings of heart in all houses where there had been at any time an Indian ayah. The suggestion in every one of these houses was that a child had died, and another had been substituted. The matter was discussed in the servants' hall at Lady Woodroffe's. The butler had been in service with Sir Humphrey and his household for thirty years.

"I came home," he said, "from India with Sir Humphrey. We came to this house. My lady and the ayah– she that died six or seven years ago – were already here with the child – now Sir Humphrey."

"Did you know the child again?"

"Know the child? I'd know Sir Humphrey's child anywhere. Why, I saw him every day till he was six months old. A lovely child he was, with his light hair and his blue eyes."

"Did my lady come from Birmingham?"

"What would my lady be doing at Birmingham? She came straight through from Scotland from her noble pa, Lord Dunedin. The ayah told us so."

The page, who was listening, resigned, with a sigh, the prospect of getting that reward of ten thousand guineas.

Lady Woodroffe, upstairs, read the third advertisement, and grew faint and sick with fear.

Sir Robert read the advertisement. "Very good," he said. "Very good indeed. But if there had been any one who knew anything at all, there would have been an answer to the offer of two thousand pounds. Let them offer a million, if they like."

"Dick," said Molly, "it seemed very clever at first. But, you see, nothing has come of it."

"On the contrary, something has come of it. Mind you, the whole world is talking about the case. If it was a genuine adoption, the unknown woman would certainly have come forward."

"Why?"

"Because there could be no reason for concealment. As it is, she remains silent. Why? Because there has been substitution instead of adoption. She has put forward another baby in the place and in the name of the dead child."

"How can you prove that?"

"I don't know, Molly. I believe I have missed my vocation. I am a sleuth-hound. Give me a clue; put me on the scent, and let me rip."

His face hardened; his features grew sharper; his eyes keener; he bent his neck forward; he was no longer the musician; he was the bloodhound looking for the scent. The acting instinct in him made him while he spoke adapt his face and his expression to the new part he played. To look the part is, if you consider, essential.

CHAPTER XV.

TWO JUMPS AND A CONCLUSION

The advertisements produced no answer except from persons hoping to make money by the case – such as the railway porter, who could swear to the baby, the lady who was really the mother, or the detective who wanted a good long-staying job. There seemed no hope or help from the advertisement. Well, then, what next?

By this time Richard Woodroffe, though never before engaged upon this kind of business, found himself so much interested in the subject that he could think of nothing else. He occupied himself with putting the case into a statement, which he kept altering. He carried himself back in imagination to the transference of the baby; he saw the doctor taking it from the mother and giving it to an ayah in the railway station. And there he stopped.

His friend Sir Robert was the doctor – his friend Sir Robert, who knew all the theatrical and show folk, as well as the royal princes and the dukes and illustrious folk. Well, he knew this physician well enough to be certain that a secret was as safe behind those steady, deep-set eyes as with any father confessor. That square chin did not belong to a garrulous temper, that big brain was a treasury of family secrets; he knew where all the skeletons were kept; this was only one of a thousand secrets; his patients told him everything – that was, of course, because he was a specialist in nervous disorders, which have a good deal to do with family and personal secrets. Fortunately, personal secrets are not family secrets.

There is a deep-seated prejudice against the upper ten thousand in the matter of family secrets. They are supposed to possess a large number of these awkward chronicles, and they are all supposed to be scandals. Aristocratic circles are supposed to be very much exposed to the danger of catching a family secret, a disease which is contagious, and is passed on from one family to another with surprising readiness. They are supposed also to be continually engaged in hushing up, hiding away, sending accomplices and servants cognizant of certain transactions to America and the Antipodes, even dropping them into dungeons. They are believed to be always trying to forget the last scandal but one, while they are destroying the proofs of the last scandal. For my own part, while admitting the contagion of the disorder, I would submit that an earl is no more liable to it than an alderman, a baron no more than a butcher. Middle-class families are always either going up or going down. With those which are going up there is an immense quantity of things to be forgotten. We wipe out with a sponge a deplorable great-aunt, we look the other way when we pass her grave; we agree to forget a whole family of cousins; we do not wish ourselves to be remembered more than, say, thirty years back; we desire that no inquiry, other than general, shall be made into our origins. In a word – if we may compress so great a discovery in a single sentence – the middle class – the great middle class – backbone, legs, brain, and tongue, as we all know, of the country – the class to which we all, or nearly all, belong – is really the home and haunt of the family secret.

This secret, however, was not in the ordinary run – not those which excitable actresses pour into the ears of physicians. Moreover, if the theory was true, it was a secret, Richard reflected, as much of the doctor's as of the lady's. And, again, since adoption became substitution, although the young doctor may have assisted in the former, the old doctor might not be anxious for the story to get about now that it meant the latter.

Here, however, were the facts as related by Alice herself.

An unknown lady, according to the doctor's statement, called upon him and stated that she was anxious to adopt a child in place of her own, which she had just lost by death.

This was early in February, 1874.

The lady stated further that she wanted a child about fifteen months of age, light-haired, blue-eyed.

(The child she adopted was thirteen months of age.)

(Did the child die in Birmingham? As the lady was apparently passing through, did the child die at a hotel?)

Dr. Steele called upon Alice, then in great poverty and distress, and asked her if she would let the child be adopted, or whether she would suffer it to go into the workhouse. She chose the former alternative, and accepted the sum of fifty pounds for her child.

The money was paid in five-pound notes. She did not know the numbers.

There were no marks on the child by which he might be identified.

On the child's clothes, before giving him up, the mother pinned a paper, giving his Christian name – Humphrey.

He was the son of Anthony Woodroffe. In the Woodroffe family there was always a Humphrey.

Nothing else, nothing else – no clue, no suggestion, or hint, or opening anywhere, except resemblance. The strange likeness of this young man Humphrey to himself haunted Dick; he looked at himself in the glass. Any one could see that his features, his hair, his eyes, were those of Humphrey. Differences there were – in stature, in expression, in carriage. Dick was as elastic and springy as the other was measured and slow of gait. As for that other resemblance, said by Alice to be even more marked – that between Humphrey and Anthony Woodroffe, the actor, John Anthony – it was even more remarkable. These resemblances one may look for in sons and in brothers, but not in cousins separated by five hundred years. Another point which he kept to himself was the resemblance which he found in Humphrey to Alice, his mother by theory. It was not the same kind of resemblance as the other – features, face, head, all were different; it was that resemblance which reminds – a resemblance not defined in words, but unmistakable. And all day long and all night Dick saw this resemblance.

He put down the points —

1. The strongest possible resemblance – so stated by the mother of the adopted child – of son to father.

2. A strong resemblance as between brothers or sons of the same father.

3. A resemblance – was it fancy of his own? – as between mother and son.

4. The lady who adopted the boy must have belonged to an Indian family, because there was an ayah with her.

5. The age of the child adopted corresponded very nearly with the age of Sir Humphrey.

He went to the British Museum and consulted "Debrett." He took the trouble to go there because he did not possess the volume, and none of his friends had ever heard of it. There he read, as the doctor had read a few weeks before, that the present holder of the Woodroffe baronetcy was Humphrey Arundale, second baronet, son of the late Sir Humphrey, etc., born on December the 2nd, 1872.

There was nothing much to be got out of that little paragraph. But, as Dick read it again and again, the letters began to shift themselves. It is astonishing how letters can, by a little shifting, convey a very different meaning. This is what he read now —

"Woodroffe, Humphrey, falsely calling himself second baronet, and son of the late Sir Humphrey, really son of one John Anthony Woodroffe, distant cousin of Sir Humphrey, vocalist, comedian, and vagabond, by Alice, daughter of Tom, Dick, or Harry Pennefather, engaged in small trade, of Hackney; born in 1873, sold by his mother in February, 1874, through the agency of Sir Robert Steele, M.D., F.R.S., Ex-President of the Royal College of Physicians, now of Harley Street, to Lilias, Lady Woodroffe, daughter of the Earl of Dunedin, who passed him off as her own child.

"Collateral branches – Richard, son of the late John Anthony Woodroffe, by Bethia, his second wife, after he had divorced and deserted the above mentioned Alice, October 14, 1875; unmarried, has no club, musician, singer, comedian, vagabond."

He put back the volume. "It's a very remarkable Red Book," he said; "nobody knows how they get at these facts. Now, I, for my part, don't seem able to get at the truth, however much I try; and there 'Debrett' has it in print, for all the world to read."

He then looked up the same work twelve years before. He found under the name of Woodroffe the fact that Sir Humphrey the elder retired from active service, and returned to England early in February, 1874.

"The old man came home, then," he said, "at the very time when the adoption was negotiated. At that very time. How does that bear on the case? Well, if his own child died, there was perhaps time to get another to take its place before he got home."

Now, Dick in a small way was a story-teller; he was in request by those who knew him because he told stories very well, and also because he told very few, and would only work when he could capture an idea, and when a story came of its own accord; he was the author of one or two comediettas; further, he had been on the stage, and had played many parts. From this variegated experience he understood the value of drawing your conclusion first, and putting together your proofs afterwards: perhaps the proofs might fail to arrive; but the conclusion would remain. Geometry wants to build up proofs and arrive at a conclusion which one would not otherwise guess. Who could possibly imagine that the square on the side opposite the right angle is equal to the sum of the squares on the sides containing the right angle? Not even the sharpest woman ever created would arrive at such a conclusion without proofs. In law also, chiefly because men are mostly liars, exact proof is demanded – proof arrived at by painfully picking the truth out of the lies. This young man, for his part, partly because he was a story-teller and a dramatist, partly because he was a musician, found it the best and readiest method to jump at the truth first, and to prove it afterwards. He arrived at this conclusion, which perfectly satisfied him, without any reason, like a kangaroo, by a jump. In fact, he took two jumps.

It is always a great help in cases requiring thought and argument and construction – because every good case is like a story in requiring construction – to consult the feminine mind; if you are interested in the owner, or tenant, of a certain mind, it makes the consultation all the better. Richard Woodroffe consulted Molly every day. By talking over the case again and again, and by looking at it in company, one becomes more critical and at the same time clearer in one's views. There were, as you know, many reasons why Richard should consult this young lady, apart from her undoubted intelligence.

"Why, Molly," he asked – "why – I put it to your feminine perceptions – why was this good lady so profoundly moved by the mere sight of the fellow? She wasn't moved by the sight of me. Yet I am exactly like him, I believe. It was at the theatre. She was in a private box; he was one of a line of Johnnies in the stalls. She was so much affected that she had to leave the house. She met him again at Steele's dinner. She was affected in the same way. Why? She is presumed never to have seen the fellow before; she certainly has not seen him for twenty-four years. Why, I ask, was she so much affected? She tells me that the sight of him always affects her in exactly the same way – with the same mysterious yearning and longing and with a sadness indescribable.

"Wait a minute. Hear me out. Is it his resemblance to a certain man – her first husband? But again, I am like him, and she does not yearn after me a bit. What can it be except an unknown sense – the maternal instinct – which is awakened in her? What is it but his own identity, which she alone can understand – with her child?"

"Dick," said Molly, "it's a tremendous jump. Yet, of course – "

"Of course. I knew you would agree with me. The intuitions – the conclusions – the insight of women are beyond everything. Molly, it is a blessed thing that you are retained in this case. The sight of you is to me a daily refresher; the look of you is a heavy fee; and the voice of you is an encouragement. Stand by me, Molly – and I will pull this half-brother of mine down from that bad eminence and ask him, when he stands beside me, with an entirely new and most distinguished company of cousins, how he feels, and what has become of his superiority. You shall introduce him to the pew-opener, and I will present him to the draper."

Again, there was the second jump. "I ask you that, Molly. Do you imagine that the doctor is really and truly as ignorant as he would have us believe, of the lady's name? He knows Lady Woodroffe; he asks her son to dinner. To be sure, he knows half the world. If he attended the dead child, of course he would have known her name. But I suppose he did not. If so, since the lady came to him immediately after the death, he might have consulted the registers, to find what children of that age had died during a certain week in Birmingham – if the child did die there, of which we are not certain. Even in a great city like Birmingham there are not many children of that age dying every day; very few dying in hotels; and very few children indeed belonging to visitors and strangers. Molly mine – if the doctor did not know, the doctor might have known. Is that so? Deny it if you can."

"I suppose so, Dick, though really I don't see what you are driving at."

"Very well, then. We go on. Why did the doctor go out of his way to invite Humphrey to meet his true mother? Now, I know Dr. Steele. He's an awfully good fellow – charitable and good-natured; he'll do anything for a man; but he's a man of science, and he's always watching and thinking and putting things together. I've heard him talk about heredity, and what a man gets from his ancestors. Now, I'm quite certain, Molly – without any proof – I don't want any proof. Hang your hard-and-fast matter-of-fact evidence! I am quite certain, I say, that Steele invited Humphrey and his mother and myself in order to look at us all and watch differences and likenesses. You see, the case may be a beautiful illustration of hereditary qualities. Here is a young man separated from his own people from infancy. There can be no imitation; and now, after twenty years and more, the man of science can contemplate the son, brought up in a most aristocratic and superior atmosphere; the mother, who has always remained in much the same condition except for money; and another son, who has been brought up like his father, a vagabond and a wanderer – with a fiddle. It was a lovely chance for him. I saw him looking at us all dinner-time; in the evening, when I was playing, I saw him, under his bushy eyebrows, looking from Humphrey to his mother. I wondered why. Now I know. The doctor, Molly, is an accomplice."

"An accomplice! Oh! And a man in that position!"

"An accomplice after the act, not before it. My theory is this: Dr. Steele met the lady after he came to town. How he managed to raise himself from the cheap general practitioner to a leading London physician, one doesn't know. It's like stepping from thirty shillings a week to being a star at fifty pounds; no one knows how it's done. Do you think Lady Woodroffe was useful in talking about him? If I wrote a story, I should make the doctor dog the lady's footsteps and coerce her into advancing him. But this isn't a story. However, I take it that he met her, recognized her, and that they agreed that nothing was to be said about this little transaction of the past. Then, of course, when Alice turned up unexpectedly, and asked where the child was to be seen, there was nothing to do except to hold up his hands and protest that he knew nothing about the child."

"But all this is guess-work, Dick."

"Yes. I am afraid we have nothing before us but guess-work. Unless we get some facts to go upon. Look here. A woman is standing on one side of a high wall; another woman is on the other side of the wall. There is a door in the wall; Sir Robert keeps the key of that door in his pocket. There is only one key, and he has it. Unless he consents to unlock the door, those two women can never meet. And so my half-brother will remain upon his eminence."

They fell into a gloomy silence.

Dick broke it. "Molly, what about our good friend, the mother of this interesting changeling?"

"She is strangely comforted by the reflection that the matter is in your hands. Dick, you have found favour in her sight and in her husband's."

"Good, so far."

"And she is firmly persuaded that you will bring the truth to light. She still clings to her dream, you know."

"Does she talk about Humphrey? Was she taken with him?"

"She says little. She lies down and shuts her eyes. Then she is thinking of him. She likes me to play, so that she may think about him. When we drive out, I am sure she is looking for him in the crowd. If he were to call, she would tell him everything. And I am certain that she dreams of heaping upon him all that a young man can possibly desire as soon as she gets him back."

"I hope the poor soul will not meet with disappointment. But I fear, Molly – I fear." He relapsed into his gloomy silence. "I hold the two ends of the chain in my hands, but I cannot connect the ends. I might go to Steele and show him what I suspect. He would only laugh at me. He laughs like the Sphynx, sometimes. If I went to Lady Woodroffe, I should be handed over to her solicitors, and by them conducted to the High Court of Justice; I should hear plain speaking from the Judge on the subject of defamation of character. Everybody would believe that I was a black-mailer. I should be called upon to pay large sums of money as damages; and I should have to go through the Court of Bankruptcy."

The mind of this inquirer had never before been exercised upon any matter more knotty than the presentation of a simple plot, or the difficulty of getting people off the stage. Sometimes, in moments of depression, he even doubted his own conclusions – a condition of mind fatal to all discovery, because it is quite certain that the eye of faith first perceives what the slow piecing together of facts afterwards proves. You must perceive the truth, somehow, first before you can prove it. Perhaps it is not the truth which is at first discerned. In that case, the seeker after truth has at least an imaginary object by which to direct his steps. It may lead him wrong; on the other hand, it may help him to recover the clue which will lead him straight to the heart of things. In a word, one wants a theory to assist all research in things of science or in things of practice.