THE CHANGELING
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MY LITTLE GIRL.
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THIS SON OF VULCAN.
THE CASE OF MR. LUCRAFT.
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'TWAS IN TRAFALGAR'S BAY.
THE MONKS OF THELEMA.
THE TEN YEARS' TENANT.
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THE CHANGELING
BY
WALTER BESANT
AUTHOR OF
"ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN," "A FOUNTAIN SEALED," ETC.
[Illustration]
A NEW EDITION
LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS
1899
PRINTED BY
WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. WAS IT SUBSTITUTION? 1
II. THE ONLY WITNESS GONE 15
III. THE THREE COUSINS 23
IV. THE CONSULTING-ROOM 46
V. GUEST NIGHT 57
VI. THE OLD LOVER 73
VII. THE MASTER OF THE SITUATION 84
VIII. THE COUSINS 92
IX. ONE MORE 110
X. COUSIN ALFRED'S SECRET 116
XI. THE DOCTOR'S DINNER 126
XII. THE OTHER CHILD OF DESERTION 143
XIII. A MIDNIGHT WALK 157
XIV. THE FIRST MOVE 169
XV. TWO JUMPS AND A CONCLUSION 185
XVI. A WRETCH 199
XVII. THE SECOND BLOW 210
XVIII. A GRACIOUS LADY 222
XIX. A CABINET COUNCIL 241
XX. JOHN HAVERIL CLEARS UP THINGS 253
XXI. "TO BE OFF WITH THE OLD LOVE" 265
XXII. THE CLAN AGAIN 276
XXIII. ONE MORE ATTEMPT 290
XXIV. A HORRID NIGHT 300
XXV. THE FIRST MOTHER 313
XXVI. THE SECOND MOTHER 322
CHAPTER THE LAST. FORGIVENESS 336
THE CHANGELING.
CHAPTER I.
WAS IT SUBSTITUTION?
"Pray be seated, madam." The doctor offered his visitor a chair.
Then he closed the door, with perhaps a more marked manner than one
generally displays in this simple operation. "I am happy to inform
you," he began, "that the arrangements--the arrangements," he repeated
with meaning, "are now completed."
The lady was quite young--not more than twenty-two or so--a handsome
woman, a woman of distinction. Her face was full of sadness; her
eyes were full of trouble; her lips trembled; her fingers nervously
clutched the arms of the chair. When the doctor mentioned the
arrangements, her cheek flushed and then paled. In a word, she
betrayed every external sign of terror, sorrow, and anxiety.
"And when can I leave this place?"
"This day: as soon as you please."
"The woman made no objections?"
"None. You can have the child."
"I have told you my reasons for wishing to adopt this child"--he had
never asked her reasons, yet at every interview she repeated them:
"my own boy is dead. He is dead." There was a world of trouble in the
repetition of the word.
The doctor bowed coldly. "Your reasons, madam," he said, "are
sufficient for yourself. I have followed your instructions without
asking for your reasons. That is to say, I have found the kind of
child you want: light hair and blue eyes, apparently sound and
healthy; at all events, the child of a sound and healthy mother. As
for your reasons, I do not inquire."
"I thought you might like----"
"They are nothing to do with me. My business has been to find a child,
and to arrange for your adoption of it. I have therefore, as I told
you, arranged with a poor woman who is willing to part with her child."
"On my conditions?"
"Absolutely. That is--she will never see the child again; she will not
ask who takes the child, or where it is taken, or in what position of
life it will be brought up. She accepts your assurance that the child
will be cared for, and treated kindly. She fully consents."
"Poor creature!"
"You will give her fifty pounds, and that single payment will
terminate the whole business."
"Terminate the whole business? Oh, it will begin the whole business!"
"There are many reasons for adoption," the doctor continued,
returning to the point with which he had no concern. "I have read in
books of substituting a child--introducing a child--for the sake of
keeping a title, or an estate, or a family."
The lady answered as if she had not heard this remark. "The mother
consents to sell her child! Poor creature!"
"She accepts your conditions. I have told you so. Go your way--she
goes hers."
The lady reflected for a moment. "Tell me," she said,--"you are a man
of science,--in such an adoption----"
"Or, perhaps, such a substitution," interrupted the doctor.
"Is there not danger of inherited vice, or disease?"
"Certainly there is. It is a danger which you must watch in educating
the child. He may inherit a tendency to drink: guard against it by
keeping him from alcohol of any kind. He may show physical weakness;
watch him carefully. But nine-tenths of so-called hereditary disease
or vice are due to example and conditions of life."
"If we do not know the character of the parents--they may be
criminals. What if the child should inherit these instincts?"
The doctor, who had been standing, took a chair, and prepared himself
to argue the point. He was a young man, with a strong jaw and a square
forehead. He had a face and features of rude but vigorous handling;
such a face as a noble life would make beautiful in age, and an
ignoble life would make hideous. Every man has as many faces as there
are years of his life, and we heed them not; yet each follows each
in a long procession, ending with the pale and waxen face in the
coffin--that solemn face which tells so much.
"There is," he said, "a good deal of loose talk about heredity. Some
things external are hereditary--face, eyes, figure, stature, hands,
certainly descend from father to son; some diseases, especially those
of the nervous kind; some forms of taste and aptitude, especially
those which are artistic. Things which are not natural, but acquired,
are never hereditary--never. If the boy's father is the greatest
criminal in the country, it won't hurt him a bit, because he is taken
away too early to have observed or imitated. The sons are said to
take after the mothers; that is, perhaps, because they have always
got the models before them. In your case, you will naturally become
the child's most important model. Later on, will come in the male
influence. If there is, for instance, a putative father----"
"There will be, of course, my husband."
The doctor bowed again. Then there was a husband living. "He will
become the boy's second model," he said. "In other words, madam, the
vices of the boy's parents--if they have vices--will not affect him in
the least. Gout, rheumatism, asthma, consumption,--all these things,
and many more, a child may inherit; but acquired criminality, never.
Be quite easy on that point."
"My desire is that the child may become as perfect a gentleman at all
points as his--as my husband."
"Why should he not? He has no past to drag him down. You will train
him and mould him as you please--exactly as you please."
"You have not told me anything about the mother, except that she is in
want."
"Why should you learn her name, or she yours?"
"I have no desire to learn her name. I was thinking whether she is the
kind of woman to feel the loss of her child."
The doctor, as yet inexperienced in the feminine nature, marvelled at
this sympathy with the mother whose child the lady was buying.
"Well," he said, "she is a young woman--of respectable character, I
believe; good looking; in her speech something of a cockney, if I
understand that dialect."
"The more respectable she is, the more she will feel the loss of her
child."
"Yes; but there is another consideration. This poor creature has a
husband who has deserted her."
"Then her child should console her."
"Her husband is a comedian--actor--singing fellow,--a chap who asks
for nothing but enjoyment. As for wife and children, they may look out
for themselves. When I saw him, I read desertion in his face; in his
wife's face, it was easy to read neglect."
"Poor creature!"
"Now he's gone--deserted her. Nothing will do but she must go in
search of him. Partly for money to help her along, partly because the
workhouse is her only refuge, she sells her baby."
The lady was silent for a while, then she sighed. "Poor creature!
There are, then, people in the world as unhappy as I myself?"
"If that is any consolation, there are. Well, madam, you now know the
whole history; and, as it doesn't concern you, nor the child, best
forget it at once."
"Poor mother!"
She kept harping on the bereavement, as though Providence, and not she
herself, was the cause.
"I have told her that the boy will be brought up in ease--affluence
even"--the lady inclined her head--"and she is resigned."
"Thank you. And when----?"
"You would like to go up to London this afternoon? Well, I will
myself bring the child to the railway station. Once more, as regards
heredity. If the child should inherit his mother's qualities, he will
be truthful and tenacious, or obstinate and perhaps rather stupid; if
his father's, he will be artistic and musical, selfish, cold-hearted,
conceited."
"He might inherit the better qualities of both."
"Ah, then he will be persevering, high-principled, a man of artistic
feeling--perhaps of power,--ambitious, and desirous of distinction. I
wish, madam, that he may become so perfect and admirable a young man."
He rose. "I have only, I think, to receive the money which will start
this poor woman on her wild-goose chase. Thank you. Ten five-pound
notes. I will take care that the woman has it at once."
"For your own trouble, Dr. Steele?"
"My fee is three guineas. Thank you."
"I shall be on the platform or in the train at a quarter before three.
Please look about for an Indian ayah, who will receive the child.
You are sure that there will never be any attempt made to follow and
discover my name?"
"As to discovery," he said, "you may rest quite easy. For my own
part, my work lies in this slum of Birmingham; it is not likely that
I shall ever get out of it. I am a sixpenny doctor; you are a woman
of society: I shall never meet you. This little business will be
forgotten to-morrow. If, in the future, by any accident I were to meet
you, I should not know you. If I were to know you, I should not speak
to you. Until you yourself give me leave, even if I should recognize
you, I should not speak about this business."
"Thank you," she said coldly. "It is not, however, likely that you
will be tempted."
He took up an open envelope lying on the table--it was the envelope in
which the lady had brought the notes,--replaced them, and put them in
his pocket. Then he opened the door for the lady, who bowed coldly,
and went out.
* * * * *
A few days before this, the same lady, with an Indian ayah, was
bending over a dying child. They sent for the nearest medical man. He
came. He tried the usual things; they proved useless. The child must
die.
The child was dead.
The child was buried.
The mother sat stupefied. In her hand she held a letter--her
husband's latest letter. "In a day or two," he said, "my life's
work will be finished. In a fortnight after you get this, I shall be
at Southampton. Come to meet me, dear one, and bring the boy. I am
longing to see the boy and the boy's mother. Kiss the boy for me;"
and so on, and so on--always thinking of the boy, the boy, the boy!
And the boy was dead! And the bereaved father was on his way home!
She laid down the letter, and took up a telegram. Already he must be
crossing the Alps, looking forward to meeting the boy, the boy, the
boy!
And the boy was dead.
The ayah crouched down on a stool beside her mistress, and began
whispering in her own language. But the lady understood.
As she listened her face grew harder, her mouth showed resolution.
"Enough," she said; "you have told me enough. You can be silent?--for
my sake, for the sake of the sahib? Yes--yes--I can trust you. Let me
think."
Presently she went out; she walked at random into street after street.
She stopped, letting chance direct her, at a surgery with a red lamp,
in a mean quarter. She read the name. She entered, and asked to see
Dr. Steele, not knowing anything at all about the man.
She was received by a young man of five and twenty or so. She stated
her object in calling.
"The child I want," she said, "should be something like the child I
have lost. He must have light hair and blue eyes."
"And the age?"
"He must not be more than eighteen months or less than a year. My own
child was thirteen months old. He was born on December 2, 1872."
"I have a large acquaintance in a poor neighbourhood," said the
doctor. "The women of my quarter have many babies. If you will give me
a day or two, I may find what you want." He made a note--"Light hair,
blue eyes; birth somewhere near December 2, 1872,--age, therefore,
about thirteen months."
At a quarter before three in the afternoon a woman, carrying a baby,
stood inside the railway station at Birmingham. She was young, thinly
clad, though the day was cold; her face was delicate and refined,
though pinched with want and trouble. She looked at her child every
minute, and her tears fell fast.
The doctor arrived, looked round, and walked up to her. "Now, Mrs.
Anthony," he said, "I've come for the baby."
"Oh! If it were not for the workhouse I would never part with him."
"Come, my good woman, you know you promised."
"Take him," she said suddenly. She almost flung him in the doctor's
arms, and rushed away.
Above the noise of the trains and the station, the doctor heard her
sobbing as she ran out of the station.
"She'll soon get over it," he said. But, as has already been observed,
the doctor was as yet inexperienced in the feminine heart.
* * * * *
About six o'clock that evening the lady who had received the baby had
arrived at her house in Bryanston Square.
"Now," she said, when she had reached the nursery, "we will have a
look at the creature--oh! the little gutter-born creature!--that is to
be my own all the rest of my life."
The ayah threw back the wraps, and disclosed a lusty boy, about a year
or fifteen months old.
The lady sat down by the table, and dropped her hands in her lap.
"Oh," she cried, "I _could_ not tell him! It broke my heart to watch
the boy on his deathbed: it would kill him--it would kill him--the
child of his old age, his only child! To save my husband I would do
worse things than this--far worse things--far worse things."
Among the child's clothes, which were clean and well kept, there
was a paper. The lady snatched it up. There was writing on it.
"His name"--the writing was plain and clear, not that of a wholly
uneducated woman--"is Humphrey. His surname does not matter. It begins
with 'W.'"
"Why," cried the lady, "Humphrey! Humphrey! My boy's own name! And
his surname begins with 'W'--my boy's initial! If it should be my own
boy!--oh! ayah, my own boy come back again!"
The ayah shook her head sadly. But she changed the child's clothes for
those of the dead child; and she folded up his own things, and laid
them in a drawer.
"The doctor has not deceived me," said the lady. "Fair hair, blue
eyes; eyes and hair the colour of my boy." The tears came into her
eyes.
"He's a beautiful boy," said the nurse; "not a spot nor a blemish,
and his limbs round and straight and strong. See how he kicks. And
look--look! why, if he hasn't got the chin--the sahib's chin!"
It was not much: a dimple, a hollow between the lower lip and the end
of the chin.
"Strange! So he has. Do you think, nurse, the sahib, his father, will
think that the child looks his age? He is to be a year and a quarter,
you know."
The ayah laughed. "Men know nothing," she said.
In a day or two the supposed parent returned home. He was a man
advanced in years, between sixty and seventy. He was tall and spare
of figure. His features were strongly marked, the features of a man
who administers and commands. His face was full of authority; his eyes
were as keen as a hawk's. He stepped up the stairs with the spring
of five and twenty, and welcomed his wife with the sprightliness of
a bridegroom of that elastic age. The man was, in fact, a retired
Indian. He had spent forty years or so in administrating provinces: he
was a king retired from business, a sovereign abdicated, on whose face
a long reign had left the stamp of kingcraft. It was natural that in
the evening of his life this man should marry a young and beautiful
girl; it was also quite natural that this girl should entertain, for
a husband old enough to be her grandfather, an affection and respect
which dominated her.
He held out both arms; he embraced his wife with the ardour of a
young lover; he turned her face to the light.
"Lilias!" he murmured, "let me look at you. Why, my dear, you look
pale--and worried! Is anything the matter?"
"Nothing--nothing--now you are home again."
"And the boy? Where is the boy?"
"He shall be brought in." The ayah appeared carrying the child.
"Here he is; quite well--and strong--and happy. Your son is quite
happy--quite happy----" Her voice broke. She sank into a chair, and
fell into hysterical sobbing and weeping. "He is quite--quite--quite
happy."
They brought cold water, and presently she became calmer. Then the
father turned again to consider the boy.
"He looks strong and hearty; but he doesn't seem much bigger than when
you carried him off six months ago."
"A little backward with his growth." The mother had now recovered.
"But that's nothing. He's made a new start already. Feel his fingers.
There's a grip! Your own living picture, Humphrey!"
"Ay, ay. Perhaps I would rather, for good looks, that he took after
his mother. Blue eyes, fair hair, and the family dimple in the chin."
* * * * *
When the doctor was left alone, he took the envelope containing the
bank-notes from his pocket, and threw it on his desk. Then he sat
down, and began to think over the situation.
"What does she do it for?" he asked. "Her own child is dead. There
is no doubt about that; her face is so full of trouble. She wants to
deceive her husband: at least, I suppose so. She will keep that secret
to herself. The ayah is faithful--that's pretty certain. There will
be no blackmailing in that quarter. A fine face she has"--meaning
the lady, not the ayah. "Hard and determined, though. I should like
to see it soften. I wish she had trusted me. But there, one couldn't
expect it of a woman of that temperament--cold, reserved, haughty; a
countess, perhaps. It's like the old story-books. Somebody will be
disinherited. This boy is going to do it. Nobody will ever find it
out. And that's the way they build up their fine pedigrees!"
* * * * *
The doctor was quite wrong. Nobody was to be disinherited; nor was
there an estate. This you must understand, to begin with. The rest I
am going to tell you.
"No clue," the doctor continued. "She is quite safe, unless she
were to meet me. No other clue. Nobody else knows." He took up the
envelope, and observed that it had part of an address upon it. All
he could read, however, was one word--"Lady." "Oho!" he said; "there
_is_ a title, after all. It looks as if the latter half were a 'W.'
There's a conspiracy, and I'm a conspirator! Humph! She's a beautiful
creature!"
He fell into meditation on that subject which is always interesting to
mere man--the face of a woman. Then his thoughts naturally wandered
off to the conversation he had held with that memorable face.
"I _should_ like, if I could, to learn how this job will turn out from
the hereditary point of view! Will that interesting babe take after
his father? Will he astonish his friends by becoming a low comedian?
Or will he take after his mother, and become a simple, honourable
Englishman? Or will he combine the inferior qualities of both, and
become a beautiful and harmonious blend, which may make him either a
villain of the deeper dye, or a common cold-blooded man of the world,
with a touch of the artist?"