A FATHER’S CLAIM.
Alexis scarcely knows what he is doing during that scamper back to
Cheswold Grange.
Titmouse, inspirited by the knowledge that she is going home to her
stable and two o’clock feed, throws her shoulders forward and sends
out her feet, trotting as if for a wager.
‘Take off her bridle and give her some corn,’ says Alexis to the
groom who receives him. ‘I shall want her again in ten minutes.’
He goes to the library, unlocks a despatch box, and takes out an
oblong velvet case, containing his wife’s portrait--a picture taken
by a famous photographer during their bright Parisian honeymoon,--the
portrait of a girl-bride, lovely, elegantly dressed, smiling at the
unknown future, and unconscious that these happy, idle honeymoon
hours were eating up the capital that should have served to start
husband and wife in the business of life. It is a photograph of
Sibyl at her best--before secret cares and hypocrisies had wrought
their lines on her fair young face.
Alexis contemplates the picture regretfully for a few moments before
he puts it in his pocket.
‘Yes, she was very lovely then,’ he tells himself. ‘And there is
nothing in this face that bespeaks a heart capable of treachery or
deceit. It was poverty’s bitter school that spoiled her. Some noble
spirits grow strong by treading the rough ways of life--hers was too
weak to survive the ordeal of misfortune. Poor child, she must have
suffered!’
He is on Titmouse again and returning to Dorley in a few minutes,
very much against the mare’s inclination. She indulges in a stubborn
crawl, or, being touched up with the whip, jogs and jolts her rider
in an irregular trot, expressive of supreme ill-temper. Urged out
of this, she sets off in a furious canter, as if to inform him that
she has some ‘go’ left in her yet, in spite of ill-usage, and may
contrive to pitch him over her head if he is too aggravating.
These devices finally bring Alexis to Dorley, where he finds Linda
and Trot in the front garden, evidently on the watch for him.
‘I am so glad you have returned,’ cries Linda. ‘You have made me
quite miserable.’
‘Forgive me, dear Miss Challice, but if you knew what hopes that one
little word Redcastle have raised in my mind! See here’--he takes the
case from his pocket and shows her Sibyl’s photograph,--‘does that
face remind you of any face you have ever seen before?’
‘Yes,’ she answers, pale to the lips, but without an instant’s
hesitation, ‘it is the portrait of Trot’s mother. She was not so
beautiful as that. She was thin and worn and haggard, but I should
recognise the eyes and mouth anywhere. It is she.’
‘This is the portrait of my wife, Linda; and Trot, the helpless baby
you adopted in order to save him from the hazards of his mother’s
distraction or despair, is my son.’
‘You told me your son was dead.’
‘I was taught to believe so. My wife, for some mysterious reason,
told me that cruel lie. She was ashamed, perhaps, of having
abandoned our child to the care of another, and feared to tell me the
truth.’
‘Are you sure?’ falters Linda. ‘You are not deceiving yourself and
me?’
‘If you are sure that this picture is the portrait of Trot’s mother,
there can be no doubt that Trot is my son.’
‘And you will take him away from me,’ says Linda, piteously; ‘just
when he has grown most dear. After all I have suffered--all I have
borne patiently for his sake--I am to lose him. That is hard.’
‘If you knew how I have pined for a son, Linda--what day-dreams I
have woven about my little one’s image--how bitter a grief I felt
when I was told that wicked lie about his death--you would understand
my rapture at finding him, my eagerness to claim him for my own--my
darling, my hope, my precious care, heir to the fortune that
Providence has dropped into my lap--poorly deserved on my part Heaven
knows. He shall be better worthy of it.’
‘Yes,’ murmurs Linda, faintly, ‘I can understand. It is only natural.
He is your son; your rights are sacred.’
‘And you have suffered for his sake, Linda. Your generosity has been
rewarded by the world’s injustice. But I can set all right. I shall
claim him for my own, and every one round and about Cheswold and
Dorley shall know all his story. Yes, I will not blush to tell the
whole bitter truth. How my wife left me in poverty, and how my son
was born in a workhouse.’
They are standing in the parlour, Trot watching their excited
countenances, with wonder depicted upon his own.
‘You have a right to take him away,’ says Linda, sadly, ‘but I think
you will take all the sunshine of our lives with him. My grandfather
is almost as fond of him as I am.’
‘I am not going to dissever old links, Linda. He shall come often to
see you. He shall be taught to know you as the guardian angel of his
infancy; he shall always remember his first home.’
‘Yes, but it will be his home no longer,’ replies Linda, with a sigh.
Alexis is silent. He feels that he must seem a wretch, a destroyer,
entering this happy household only to ruin its joy. But how can he
forego his claim? How can he relinquish the delight of watching his
son’s infancy develop into boyhood--guiding the baby mind, making the
boy at once pupil and plaything, source of all his pleasures in the
present and all his hopes in the future?
At this juncture Trot, who has listened intently, arrives at the
comprehension that he has a personal interest in the conversation.
He catches at the idea that he is to be taken away--transferred
from mammie to the genlamum, and he suddenly bursts in upon the
conversation with a dismal howl.
‘Me won’t be took away; me stay with mammie,’ cries the boy, and he
clambers up into Linda’s arms, and clings there as if resolved to
resist any attempt at dislodging him.
‘What, Trot,’ cries Alexis, smiling at the little one’s excitement,
‘won’t you come and live with me, and have a dear little Shetland
pony to ride, and a big garden to play in, and a rocking-horse,--and
a--lots of plum cakes and picture-books?’ Here Alexis’s knowledge
of juvenile weaknesses fails him, and he knows not what further
temptation to offer.
‘Me won’t have pony, me not want oor garden, me got nice big garden,
me want mammie,’ cries Trot, and he clings still tighter to Linda.
‘Trot, shall I tell you a secret?’
‘’Ess,’ says Trot, who thinks that a secret must needs be something
worth hearing.
‘You must come and live with me, Trot, my darling. God meant you and
me to live together. I’m your father!’
‘No, you not,’ screams the boy, ‘you’re the genlamum with the broken
arm. Me never have no fazer.’
‘And you won’t come to live at the Grange? Such a large garden, six
times as big as the garden here, and a Shetland pony with a long
tail.’
‘Me won’t,’ cries Trot, emphatically. ‘Bozer de pony!’
‘Trot has decided, Miss Challice,’ says Alexis, gravely. ‘If I were
ungrateful enough, selfish enough, to wish to take him from you, his
childish heart is true and fast. He shall stay with you, since you
wish it, for the next few years at any rate. This shall be his home,
and he shall come to Cheswold only as a visitor. You will let me have
him sometimes?’
‘Let you have him! Oh, Mr. Secretan, are you not too generous in
consenting to leave him with me?’
‘I should be an ungrateful hound if I could refuse. You have made my
son’s infancy bright and happy. You have saved him from the evils of
poverty--from his mother’s selfishness. How can I be grateful enough
to you?’
‘Only let me keep my darling a little longer, and I am more than
recompensed. I must be proud and happy too, when I have recovered
a little from this surprise, to know that he is your son--that
his future will be bright and prosperous--his worldly position
honourable,--to think that my little waif and stray should be the
future squire of Cheswold. My grandfather will be so pleased. It is a
triumph for me over him, dear old man, for he said that I was very
foolish to adopt a nameless child, and now my dearest has name and
fortune, home and father.’
‘We will make a good man of him between us, Miss Challice,’
says Alexis, more elated by this discovery than he was by the
inheritance of Miss Secretan’s estate. He has no doubt as to Trot’s
identity--there seems to him no room for doubt, yet he is anxious to
make things as certain as possible--to secure independent evidence in
case his claim to his son should ever be disputed.
He goes back to the Grange only to get a fresh horse, and then rides
into the quiet old cathedral town to talk the matter over with Mr.
Scrodgers. He does not consider the provincial solicitor a Mansfield
or a Cockburn; but Mr. Scrodgers’s is the best legal intellect
available on the spot, and to Mr. Scrodgers he goes.
The family solicitor listens to all Alexis has to tell with the
gravity of a learned owl that has lived a century or so in the same
ivy bush. He contracts his eyebrows, he purses up his lips, and looks
as if he had known the whole story before, but, for some wise reason
he had kept his knowledge to himself.
‘A curious case, Mr. Secretan,’ he says at last, ‘a very curious
case. It’s lucky your estate is not entailed.’
‘Why so?’
‘There might have been difficulties in the way of succession. It
might not be easy to identify this infant--born in such a very
irregular manner--as your son and heir. There might be suspicions.
The heir-at-law might file a bill in Chancery. I should consider
it a very hazardous business were your estate entailed; but you
as an independent man, fettered by no entail, may leave your real
property to Tom, Dick, or Harry. I should recommend you to take this
infant into your house at once, let him bear your name, let him be
recognised by all your acquaintances as your son.’
‘Yes, I shall take care of that. I shall tell everybody. But there is
a difficulty about bringing him into my house. The lady who brought
him up--who rescued him from I know not what misery--has a claim upon
his affection, the strongest, and as strong a claim on my gratitude.
To take him away from her would be almost to break her heart.’
‘Almost, but not quite. There’s a long distance between the two
adverbs,’ replies the cynical Scrodgers. ‘Most women have their
hearts almost broken once in their lives. Give her a new bonnet.’
‘You do not know the lady, sir. She is not a woman to be solaced by a
bonnet.’
‘Hasn’t she a head?’ asks Mr. Scrodgers. ‘I never knew a woman, with
a head, that a bonnet wouldn’t pacify. Half the cases at the assizes,
in which the female is a plaintiff, might be settled out of court if
the defendant knew when and how to offer the _solatium_ of a bonnet.’
‘I see, Mr. Scrodgers, you are a bachelor and a misogynist,’ says
Alexis, smilingly.
‘No, sir,’ replies the lawyer, ‘I am a misogynist, and a married man.’
‘The first thing I have to do is to alter my will,’ says Alexis,
returning to the business question.
‘Decidedly. If you are convinced that this infant--hereinbefore
named--is your son, you had better make a will in his favour.’
‘Prepare one as fast as you can, Mr. Scrodgers, leaving the bequest
to my good friend Plowden just as it stands.’
‘You must have trustees in case of your dying before the child
attains his majority.’
‘Make Plowden trustee.’
‘You should have a second, in the event of Mr. Plowden’s death.’
‘How you lawyers remind us of our mortality! Well, make Miss Challice
the second trustee and guardian of the boy in case of my death.
Nobody will ever love him better than she does.’
‘And in the event of her marriage----’
‘Marriage would make no difference in her. She would always love my
boy.’
Mr. Scrodgers relieves his doubtful mind by a faint smile. His idea
of marriage is that it makes a very great difference. To his legal
mind marriage transforms a man. Even the will he made as a bachelor
is no longer valid, proving that in the eye of the law the married
man and the bachelor are two distinct personages.
‘Then you would recommend me to get together all the evidence I can
bearing upon my boy’s birth says Alexis.
‘I think it would be wise to do so. The fact of your parentage
may never be disputed. You can dispose of the Cheswold estate
as you choose, but still it might be well to have all necessary
documents--an attested copy of your marriage certificate, and so on.’
‘Yes, I was a reckless fellow when I married. Heaven knows what
became of the certificate. My wife may have kept it. Certainly I
didn’t take any care of it. The parson had made her my wife. That was
all I thought about on that bewildering day.’
‘Then you had better get a copy of the register without delay.’
‘Yes, and I will go to the woman with whom my wife and I lodged. She
will remember that my wife was expecting to become a mother when she
left me. If that woman is to be found I will get from her a written
declaration of that fact.’
‘It would be as well to do so,’ says Mr. Scrodgers, approvingly, and
Alexis leaves him to prepare the new will, which he is to bring to
the Grange early next morning.
‘Stay,’ says the lawyer, on the threshold. ‘You haven’t told me the
infant’s Christian name.’
‘He was christened William.’
‘No other name?’
‘I believe not. But you can fill in the names to-morrow. I will ask
that question in the meantime.’
Alexis goes back to Cheswold pondering on the lawyer’s advice about
his son. Mr. Scrodgers has distinctly said that it is for the child’s
welfare, for the security of his future position, that he should be
domiciled with his father; and Alexis longs to have the little one
under the same roof with him, to see him daily, hourly, to watch over
him sleeping and waking, to make him his plaything and companion.
Against this natural desire there is the promise he has made to Linda
Challice--the debt of gratitude he owes her. Hard to break that
promise--hard to ignore that debt.