A woman passed along the driveway, and looked at him. He looked at her.
The rock on which he sat being no more than a dozen yards from where
she walked, they could see each other plainly. It seemed to him that
as she went by she relaxed her pace to study him. She was a little
woman, pretty, sad-faced, neatly dressed and perhaps fifty years of
age. Having passed once, she turned on her steps and passed again.
She passed a third time and a fourth. Each time she passed she gave
him the same long scrutinizing look, without self-consciousness or
embarrassment. He thought she might be a lady's maid or a chauffeur's
wife.
He turned to watch a young man taking a swan dive from the
spring-board. Having run the few steps which was all the spring-board
allowed of, he stood poised on the edge, feet together, his arms at his
thighs. With the leap forward his arms went out at right angles. When
he turned toward the water they bent back behind his head, his palms
twisted upward. Nearing the surface they pointed downward, cleaving the
lake with a clean, splashless penetration. The whole movement had been
lithe and graceful, the curve of a swan's neck, the spring of a flying
fish.
Not till she was close beside him did he notice that the little woman
had left the roadway, crossed the intervening patch of blueberry
scrub, and seated herself on a low bowlder close to his own.
Her self-possession was that of a woman with a single dominating
motive. "You've just arrived with Miss Ansley, haven't you?"
The voice, like the manner, was intense and purposeful. In assenting,
he had the feeling of touching something elemental, like hunger or
fire, which wouldn't be denied.
"And you're at Harvard."
He assented to this also.
"At Harvard they call you the Whitelaw Baby, don't they?"
"I've heard so. Why do you ask?"
"Because I'm the nurse from whom the Whitelaw baby was stolen nearly
twenty years ago. My name is Nash."
A memory came to him of something far away. He could hear Honey saying
he had seen her, a pretty little Englishwoman, and that Nash was her
name. Looking at her now, he saw that she was more than a pretty little
Englishwoman; she was a soul in torture, with a flame eating at the
heart. He felt sorry for her, but not so sorry as to be free from
impatience at the dogging with which the Whitelaw baby followed him.
"Why do you say this to me?"
"Because of what I've heard from the family. They've spoken of you.
They think it--queer."
"They think what queer?"
"That your name is Whitelaw--that your father's name was Theodore--that
you look so much like the rest of them. Mr. Whitelaw's name is Henry
Theodore--"
"And my father's name was only Theodore. My mother's name was Lucy. I
was born in The Bronx. I'm exactly nineteen years of age. I've heard
that Mr. Whitelaw's son if he were living now would be twenty."
Large gray eyes with silky drooping lids rested on his with a look of
long, slow searching. "You're sure of all that?"
He tried to laugh. "As sure as you can be of what's not within your own
recollection. I've been told it. I've reason to believe it."
"I'd no reason to believe that I should ever find my boy again; but I
know I shall."
"That must be a comfort to you in the trial you've had to face."
"It hasn't been a trial exactly, because you bear a trial and live
through it. This has been spending every day and every night in the
lake of fire and brimstone. I wonder if you've any idea of what it's
like."
"I don't suppose I have."
"If you did have--" He thought she was going to say that if he did have
he would allow himself to become the Whitelaw baby in order to relieve
her anguish, but she struck another note. "I hadn't the least suspicion
of what had been done to me till the two footmen had lifted the little
carriage up over the steps and into the hall. Then I raised the veil to
take my baby out, and I--I fell in a dead swoon."
He waited for her to go on again.
"Try to imagine what it is to find in place of the living child you've
laid in its bed with all the tenderness in your soul--to find in place
of that a dirty, ugly, stuffed thing, about a baby's size.... For days
after that I was just as if I was drugged. If I came to for a few
minutes I prayed that I mightn't live. I didn't want to look the mother
and father in the face."
"But hadn't you told them anything about it?"
"There was nothing to tell. The baby had vanished. I'd seen nothing;
I'd heard nothing. Neither had my friend who was with me, and who's
married now, in England. If an evil spirit had done it, it couldn't
have been silenter, or more secret. It was a mystery then; it's been a
mystery ever since."
"But you raised an alarm? You made a search?"
"The whole country raised the alarm. There wasn't a corner, or a
suspicious character, that wasn't searched. We knew it had been
done for ransom, and the ransom was ready if ever the baby had been
returned. The father and mother were that frantic they'd have done
anything. There never was a baby in the world more loved, or more
lovable. All three of us--the father, the mother, and myself--would
have died for him."
He grew interested in the story for its own sake. "And did you never
get any idea at all?"
"Nothing that ever led to anything. For a good five years Mr. Whitelaw
never rested. Mrs. Whitelaw--but it's no use trying to tell you. It
can't be told; it can't be so much as imagined. Even when you've lived
through it you wonder how you ever did. You wonder how you go on
living day by day. It's almost as if you were condemned to eternal
punishment. The clues were the worst."
"You mean that--?"
"If we could have known that the child was dead--well, you make up your
mind to that. After a while you can take up life again. But not to know
anything! Just to be left wondering! Asking yourself what they're doing
with him!--whether they're giving him the right kind of food!--whether
they're giving him _any_ kind of food!--whether they're going to kill
him, and how they're going to kill him, and who's to do the killing! To
go over these questions morning, noon, and night--to eat with them, and
sleep with them, and wake with them--and then the clues!"
"You said they were the worst."
"Because they always made you hope. No matter how often you'd been
taken in you were ready to be taken in again. Each time they said
there was a chance you couldn't help thinking that there _might_ be a
chance. It didn't matter how much you told yourself it wasn't likely.
You couldn't make yourself believe it. You felt that he'd _have_ to
be found, that he couldn't help being found. The whole thing was so
impossible that you'd have to go to his room and look at his little
empty crib to persuade yourself that he wasn't there."
To divert her from going over the ground she must have gone over
thousands of times already, he broke in with a new line of thought.
"But I've heard that they don't want to find him now--a grown-up man."
She stared at him fiercely. "_I_ do. _I_ want to find him. They were
not to blame. I was. It makes the difference."
"Still he was their son."
"He was their son, and they've suffered; but they can rest in spite
of their suffering. I can't. They can afford to give up hope because
they've nothing with which to reproach themselves. If they were me--"
He began to understand. "I see. If you could find him and bring him
back, even if they didn't want him--"
"I should have done _that_ much. It would be something. It's why I
pleaded with them to let me stay with them when I suppose the very
sight of me must have tortured them. I swore that I'd give my life to
trying to--"
"But what could you do when even the child's father, with all his
money, couldn't--?"
"I could pray. They couldn't. They're not like that. Praying's all I've
ever done which wasn't done by somebody else. I've prayed as I don't
think many people have ever prayed; and now I've come to where--"
"Where what?"
The light in her eyes was lambent, leaping and licking like a flame.
"Where I'm quieter." She made her statement slowly. "I seem to know
that he'll be given back to me because the Bible says that when we pray
believing that we _have_ what we ask for we shall receive it. Latterly
I've believed that. I haven't forced myself to believe it. It's just
come of its own accord--something like a certainty."
The claim in the look which without wavering fixed itself upon him
prompted another question. "And has that certainty got anything to do
with me?"
"I wonder if it hasn't."
"But I don't see how it can have, when you never saw me in your life
till twenty minutes ago."
"I never saw you; but I'd heard of you. I meant to see you as soon as I
got a chance. I never got it till to-day."
"But how did you know?"
"That it was you? This way. You see I'm here with Miss Lily. She's
staying for a few nights at the inn-club before going to make some
visits."
"Who's Miss Lily?"
"She was the second of the two children born after my little boy was
taken. First there was Mr. Tad. Then there was a little girl. She knows
Miss Ansley. Miss Ansley told her you were coming up, that you'd very
likely be here this afternoon, so I came and waited. Even if I hadn't
seen you drive up with her--if we'd met in the heart of Africa--I'd
have known.... You've been taken for Mr. Tad already. You know that,
don't you?"
"I know there's a resemblance."
"It's more than a resemblance. It's--it's the whole story. Mr. Whitelaw
himself saw it first. When he came back after meeting you, in this very
place, nearly two years ago, he was--well, he was terribly upset. If it
hadn't been for Mr. Tad and Miss Lily--"
"And their mother too."
"Yes, I suppose; and their mother too. But that's not what we're
considering. Whether they want you or not, if you _are_ the boy--"
He tried to speak very gently. "But you see, I couldn't be. I had a
mother. I don't remember much about her because I was only six or seven
when she died. But two things I recall--the way she loved me, and the
way I loved her. If I thought there was any truth in what you--in what
you suspect--I couldn't love her any more."
"I don't see why."
"Because I should be charging her with a crime. Would you do that--to
your own mother--after she was dead?"
"If she was dead it wouldn't matter."
"Not to her. But it would to me."
"It couldn't do you any harm."
"I'm the only judge of that."
There was exasperation in the eyes which seemed unable to tear
themselves from his face.
"But most people would like to have it proved that they'd been--"
"Been born rich men's sons. That's what you were going to say, isn't
it? I daresay I should have liked it, if.... But what's the use? We
don't gain anything by discussing it. You want to find some one who'll
pass for the lost boy. I understand that; and I understand how much it
would lessen all the grief--"
She interrupted quickly. "Yes, but I wouldn't try to foist an imposter
on them, not if it would take me out of hell. If I didn't believe--"
"But you don't believe now; you can't believe. What I've told you about
myself must make believing impossible."
"Oh, if I hadn't believed when believing was impossible I shouldn't
have the little bit of mind I've got now. Believing when it was
impossible was all that kept me sane."
"But you won't go on doing it, not as far as I'm concerned?"
She rose, with dignity. "Why not? I shan't be hurting you, shall I? In
a way we all believe it--even the Whitelaw family--even Miss Ansley."