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.
"Dick," said Molly, "about those registers."
"What about them?"
"Why, that the doctor might have found the name of the child by simply
looking into the registers."
"If the child, that is to say, died in Birmingham."
"Yes--if it died in Birmingham. Well, then, Dick--if the doctor could
search those registers----" She stopped for a moment. They always do
it on the stage, to heighten the effect.
"Well, Molly?"
"Why can't you?"
Dick sat down suddenly, knocked over by the shock of this suggestion.
"Good Heavens, Molly! Oh the depth and the height and the spring
and the leap of woman's wit! Why can't I? why can't I? Molly, I
am a log, and a lump, and a lout. I deserve that you should take
my half-brother. No--not that! Good-bye, good-bye, incomparable
shepherdess!" He raised her hand and kissed it. "I fly--I hasten--on
the wings of the wind--to Birmingham--the city of Hidden Truth--to
read the Revelations of the Register."