Archibald awoke at length, and sat up in bed. He opened his mouth,
apparently for the purpose of saying something, but his tongue refused to
articulate any recognizable words. An irregular, disjointed sound made
itself heard, like the vague outcry of an infant; and then, as if angry at
his own failure, he set up a loud and indignant wail, muffled from time to
time by the cramming of his fingers into his mouth.
Whatever else was the matter with the child, it was evident that he was
hungry--as, indeed, he well might be. Some bread and milk was brought to
him, that being his favorite food; but to the general astonishment and
dismay, he did not seem to know what it was, although he continued to
exhibit every symptom of a ravenous and constantly augmenting appetite.
They tried him with every imaginable viand, but in vain; they even put
morsels into his mouth, but he had lost the power of mastication, and
could not retain them. The more they labored, the greater became his
exasperation, until at last there was such a hubbub and confusion on the
score of Master Archibald as that hitherto rather insignificant little
personage should have felt proud to occasion.
Among the anxious and bewildered people who thronged the nursery at this
juncture was a young woman who acted as wet-nurse to the latest born of
the Malmaisons, a baby-girl three months old.
She was a healthy and full-bodied peasant, and as she pressed forward to
have her look at the now frantic Archibald, she held the nursing
infant--the only serene and complacent member of the assemblage--to her
open breast. Archibald caught sight of her, and immediately reached toward
her, arms, mouth and all, accompanying the action by an outcry so eager,
impatient, and gluttonous that it was capable of only one interpretation.
An incredible interpretation, certainly, but that made no difference;
there was nothing else to be done. Honest Maggie, giggling and rubicund,
put aside her complacent nursling (who thereupon became anything but
complacent) and took to her kind bosom this strapping and unreasonable
young gentleman, who had already got many of his second teeth. That did
not prevent him from making an unconscionably good supper, and thenceforth
the only person likely to be disturbed by his new departure in
gormandizing was Maggie herself. Everything being thus happily arranged,
the household dispersed about its business, the Baronet declaring, with a
great laugh, that he had always said Archie was but a babe in arms, and
this proved it!
Dr. Rollinson, however (the elder doctor, that is--father of the present
[2] distinguished bearer of the name), had witnessed this scene with
something more than ordinary wonder or amusement; it had puzzled, but also
interested him extremely. He was less of a conservative than many of his
profession; he kept his mind open, and was not disinclined to examine into
odd theories, and even, perhaps, to originate a few such himself upon
occasion. The question that now confronted him and challenged his
ingenuity was, What was the matter with Archibald? Why had the boy
suddenly gone back to the primitive source of nourishment, not from mere
childish whim, but from actual ignorance--as it seemed--that nourishment
was obtainable in any other way? An obvious reply would be that the boy
had become wholly, idiotic; but the more Dr. Rollinson revolved this rough
and ready explanation, the less satisfactory did he find it. He wisely
decided to study the symptoms and weigh the evidence before committing
himself one way or the other.
The first result of his observations was to confirm his impression that
Archibald was not idiotic. There was a certain sort of vacancy in the
child's expression, but it was the vacancy of ignorance rather than of
foolishness. And ignorant to a surprising degree he was. He had at no time
been regarded as a boy of large attainments; but what he knew before his
strange seizure was, to what he knew after it, as Bacon to a ploughman.
Had he been newly born into the world, he could not have shown less
acquaintance with it, so far as intellectual comprehension went; his
father, mother, sister--all were alike strangers to him; he gazed at them
with intent but unrecognizing eyes; he never looked up when his name was
spoken, nor did he betray any sign of understanding the talk that went on
around him. His own thoughts and wants were expressed by inarticulate
sounds and by gestures; but the mystery of speech evidently interested
him, and he studied the movements of the lips of those who spoke to him
with a keen, grave scrutiny to them highly amusing--except in the case of
his poor old Aunt Jane, who turned quite pale under his inquisition, and
declared that he must be bewitched, for although he seemed to know
nothing, yet he had the knowingest look of any child she ever saw. Herein
Aunt Jane gave utterance to a fact that was beginning to be generally
acknowledged. Whatever Archibald had lost, it was beyond dispute that he
had somehow come into possession of a fund of native intelligence (the
term "mother wit" seems inappropriate under the circumstances) to which he
had heretofore been a stranger. He might have forgotten his own name, and
the mother that bore him; but he had learned how to learn, and was for the
first time in his life wide awake. This was very much like saying that he
was a new boy in the old skin; and this, again, was little better than a
euphemism for changeling. Was he a changeling after all? The sage old
woman whom we have already quoted asserted confidently that he was, and
that, however much he pretended to ignorance, he really knew vastly more
than any plain human child did or ought to know. And as a warrant for this
opinion they brought forward evidence that Master Archibald, having been
left alone one day in the nursery, had been overheard humming to himself
the words of a certain song--a thing, it was argued, which he could not
have done had he known no words at all; and therefore he was a changeling.
Dr. Rollinson happened to hear this argument, and thought it worth while to
inquire further into the matter. Such testimony as he could collect went
to confirm the truth of the story. Not only so, but the song itself, if
the witnesses were to be believed, so far from being an ordinary childish
ditty, was some matter of pretty maids and foaming wine-cups that Tom
Moore might have written, and that gentlemen sometimes trolled out, an
hour or two after dinner. Now this looked very black for Archibald.
Further investigation, however, put a somewhat different face upon the
affair. It transpired that the song had been often sung in Archibald's
hearing, and before his fit, by the Honorable Richard, for whom, as has
been said, the boy had taken a queer fancy.
And, perhaps because affection is a good teacher, the boy had acquired the
power of repeating some of the verses to himself, of course without
understanding a syllable of them, and very likely without himself being
conscious of what he was doing, he hummed them over, in short, exactly as
a preoccupied parrot might do; and always at a certain time, namely, after
he had been put to bed, and was staring up at the darkening ceiling
previous to falling asleep. This, by itself, was nothing very remarkable;
the puzzle was, how could he do it now? Out of all the wreck of his small
memory, why was this song, the meaning of which he had never understood,
the sole survivor? Was it that his affection for Mr. Pennroyal had kept it
alive? So might a sentimentalist have concluded; but the Doctor was a man
of sense. Was it that the boy was shamming? Impossible on all accounts.
But then, what was it?
The Doctor had by this time worked himself up to believe that the solution
of this problem would help largely toward the clearing up of the whole
mystery. So he took notes, and continued to observe and to consider.
He found, in the first place, that the song-singing took place under
exactly the same circumstances as before the fit, and at no other time or
place.
Hereupon, he devised experiments to discover whether Archibald was
conscious that he was singing, or whether it was an act performed
mechanically, while the mind was otherwise engaged. After the child was in
bed, he quietly arranged a lamp so as to cast a circular space of light
upon the ceiling above the bed, the rest of the room being left in shadow.
Not a word of any song was heard that night; and the test was tried twice
more during the week, with a like result. At another time he got the
Honorable Richard to come into a room adjoining the nursery, and sing the
song so that Archibald might hear it. Archibald heard it, but gave no sign
of being affected thereby. He was then brought into Mr. Richard's
presence; it was the first time they had met since the change. Now, if
ever, was an opportunity for the imperishable quality of the affections to
be vindicated. But no such vindication occurred. On the contrary, after
having stared his uncle almost out of countenance for some minutes, he
turned from him with a marked expression of disapproval, and could never
afterward be induced voluntarily to go near him. The affection had become
an antipathy.
"No, madam; set your mind at rest," said the bluff Doctor to Lady Malmaison
over a cup of tea that evening. "The child's no changeling; but he's
changed, and changed for the better, too, by Gad! He can tell a bad egg
from a good one now," continued the Doctor, with a significant chuckle,
the significance of which, however, Lady Malmaison perhaps failed to
perceive. But the fact was, the Honorable Richard Pennroyal had never been
an especial favorite with Dr. Rollinson.
The next day was a new excitement. Archibald had walked, and that, too, as
well as the best-grown boy of seven that you would want to see.
"Ay, and where did he walk to?" demanded the Doctor.
It was explained that it was at the time for nursing him, and he was
sitting in his little chair at one end of the nursery, when Maggie had
entered at the other. As soon as he clapped eyes on her, he had set up his
usual impatient outcries; but Maggie, instead of going directly to him,
had stopped to exchange a few words with the head-nurse, unfastening the
front of her dress the while, however, so that Master Archibald's
impatience was carried to the point of intolerance by the glimpse thus
afforded of the good things in store for him. And then, before you had
time to think, he had got up from his chair, and trotted across the floor,
bellowing all the time, and had tugged at Maggie's dress.
"Bellowing all the time, eh?" said the Doctor.
"And walking all the same like he was ten year old, sir: and it did give us
all a turn; and if you please, sir, what do you say to _that_?"
"What do I say to that?--why, that it's just what I should have
expected--that's what I say!" replied Dr. Rollinson, who had apparently
begun to divine some clew to the grand mystery. But he vouchsafed no
explanations as yet.
Archibald did not repeat the walking miracle, although, within the space of
a few weeks only, he passed through the regular gradations of crawling,
tottering, and toddling, to normal pedestrianism of the most active kind.
His progress in other accomplishments was almost parallel with this. From
inarticulate gabble he trained his tongue to definite speech; his
vocabulary expanded with astonishing rapidity, and, contrary to his
previous habit, he made incessant use of it. He was now as remarkable for
loquacity as formerly for the opposite characteristic; and his keenness of
observation and retentive memory were a theme of general admiration. In a
word, he used his five senses to ten times better effect than had ever
been expected of him in the old days; and no one who had not seen him for
a year from the time of his fit would have recognized him as the same
child. He was not only making up for lost time--he was incomparably
outstripping his earlier self; he seemed to have emerged from a mental and
physical cocoon--to have cast aside an incrustation of deterrent
clumsiness, and to be hastening onward with the airy case and accuracy of
perfect self-possession. At the end of a year he was to all intents and
purposes ten years old; and what was most remarkable about this swift
advance lay in the fact that a year had seen the whole of it. Though he
had been eight years in the world, the first seven had furnished none of
the mental or moral material for the last: it stood alone and
disconnectedly. Of those seven years it is certain that he retained not
the smallest recollection; they were to him as if they had never been. The
only thing they did provide him with was a well-fed and sound body; in
other respects Archibald was positively new. He had to make the
acquaintance of his family and friends over again; but it was done with
modifications. In other cases besides that of his uncle, it was observed
that he felt antipathies where formerly he loved, and _vice versa_.
A minor instance, but interesting as must be all evidence in a case so
strange as this, is that of the brindled cat that was buried in the
garden. Archibald was brought to the grave, which he had so pathetically
haunted before his metamorphosis, not many weeks after the metamorphosis
occurred; and every means was used to revive in him some recollection of
the bereavement; they even went so far as to uncover poor pussy's
remains.... Archibald was first unconscious and indifferent, then curious,
finally disgusted. His feelings were not otherwise touched. All
associations connected with this whilom pet of his, grief for whose loss
was supposed to have been the impelling cause of the fit itself, were as
utterly expunged from his mind as if they had never existed there.
Moreover, aversion from all cats was from this time forth so marked in him
as almost to amount to horror; while dogs, whose presence had been wont to
fill him with dismay, were now his favorite companions. It was the same in
other things; the boy formed independent opinions and prejudices in all
the relations of life--independent, that is, of his past. His temper, too,
was changed; no longer timid, appealing and docile, it was now determined,
enterprising, and bold. It was manifest even thus early that here was a
character fitted to make its way in the world.
"No, I protest, Doctor, I can never believe it's the same child," said Lady
Malmaison, with a sigh. "That noisy, self-willed boy is never my quiet,
affectionate little Archie. And yesterday he beat his brother Edward, that
is two years older than he. Heigho! Pray, dear Doctor, what is your
opinion?"
"My opinion, Lady Malmaison, is that women will never be content," answered
the bluff old physician. "I can remember the time when you thought your
quiet little Archie was a nincompoop--and quite right too. And now because
a monstrous piece of good luck has made a Crichton of him, you begin to
regret the nincompoop! It ain't logical;" and the Doctor took snuff.
"But who ever heard of a child changing his whole nature all in a moment?"
persisted Lady Malmaison.
"Why, isn't all in a moment better than inch by inch? The thing is no such
mighty matter as some folks try to make it out. The boy went to sleep as
soon as he was born, and has but just waked up--that's my notion about it.
So now, instead of starting, the way most of us do, at the point of
helplessness, he begins life with a body full of seven years' pith, and
faculties sharp set as a new watch. Till now he has but dreamed; now he's
going to exist, with so much the more extra impetus. He don't recollect
what he's been dreaming--why should he?"
"But he did recollect some things, Doctor; that song.... And then, his
walking across the room."
"Purely physical--purely automatic," replied the Doctor, tapping his
snuff-box, and pleased with Lady Malmaison's awe at the strange word. "If
he had stopped to think what he was doing he couldn't have done it. The
body, I tell you, grows under all circumstances--as much when you're
asleep as when you're awake; and the body has a memory of its own,
distinct from the mental memory. Have you never hummed a song when you
were doing your embroidery, and thinking about--about Lady Snaffle's
elopement with the captain?"
"Oh, Doctor!"
"Yes; and if I'd come in at the moment and asked you what you were singing,
could you have told me? Of course you couldn't! You could have told me
all about the elopement. Well, then, that's clear now, ain't it?"
"Yes," said Lady Malmaison, meaning, it must be supposed, "as clear as
mud." Dr. Rollinson chuckled to himself, and they continued their game of
piquet.