The Changeling

"You know. The American doctor did not. Well, and while I was lying in my dark room, I had a dream. It came again. It kept on coming. A dream which told me that I should see my child again if I came to London. So my husband brought me over."

"And you think that you will find your child?"

"I am sure that I shall. It is the only thing that I have prayed for. Oh, you need not warn me about excitement; I know the danger. I don't care so very much about living; but I want that dream to come true. I must find the boy."

"You might as well look for him at the bottom of the sea. Why, my dear lady, your boy was intended to take the place of a dead child; I am sure he was. I know nothing at all about him. There is no clue – no chance of finding the child."

"Do you know nothing?"

"Upon my honour, madam, I cannot even guess. The lady did not give me her name, and I made no inquiries."

"Oh!" Her face fell. "I had such hopes. At the theatre, yesterday, I saw a young man who might have been my son – tall, fair, blue-eyed. Oh, do you know nothing?"

"Nothing at all," he replied decidedly. "And you came here," he went on, "remembering my name, and wondering whether it was the same man? Well, Mrs. Haveril, it is the same man, and I remember the whole business perfectly. Now go on."

"Where is that child, doctor?"

"I say that I don't know. I never did know. The lady gave me the money, received the child at the railway station. You brought it to the waiting-room. She had an Indian ayah with her, and the train carried her off, baby and all. That is all I can tell you."

Mrs. Haveril sighed. "Is that all?"

"Madam, since such precautions were taken, it is very certain that no one knew of the matter except the lady herself, and she will certainly not tell, because, as I have already told you, the case looked like substitution, and not adoption."

"What can I do, then?"

"You can do nothing. I would advise you to put the whole business out of your head and forget it. You can do nothing."

"I cannot forget it: I wish I could. The wickedness of it! Oh, to give away my own child only to run after that villain!"

"My dear lady, is it well to allow one single episode to ruin your life? Consider your duty to your second husband. You should bring him happiness, not anxiety. Consider your splendid fortune. If the papers are true, you are worth many millions."

"The papers are quite true."

"You yourself are still comparatively young – not more than five and forty, I should say. Time has dealt tenderly with you. When I knew you, in Birmingham, you were a girl still, with a delicate, beautiful face. How could your husband desert you? Your face is still delicate and still beautiful. You become the silks and satins as you then became your cottons. Resign yourself to twenty years more of happiness and luxury. As for that weakness of yours, it will vanish if you avoid excitement and agitation. If not – what did your American adviser warn you?"

She rose reluctantly. "I cannot forget," she said. "I must go on remembering. But the dream was true. It was sent, doctor; it was sent. And the first step, I am sure and certain, was to lead me here."

After a solitary dinner, Sir Robert sat by the fire in his dining-room. A novel lay on a chair beside him. Like many scientific men, he was a great reader of novels. For the moment, he was simply looking into the fire while his thoughts wandered this way and that. He had seen about twenty patients in the course of the day, and made, in consequence, forty guineas. He was perfectly satisfied with the condition of his practice; he was under no anxiety about his reputation: his mind was quite at ease concerning himself from every point of view. He was thinking of this and of that – things indifferent – when suddenly he saw before him, by the light of the four candles on the table, the ghost of a date. The figures, in fact, stood out, luminous, against the dark mahogany of his massive sideboard. "December 2, 1872." He rubbed his eyes; the figures disappeared; he lay back; the figures came again.

"It's a trick of memory," he said. "What have I done to-day that could suggest this date?" The only important event of the day was the visit of his old patient, and the reminder about a certain adoption in which he had taken a part. Was the date connected with that event?

He got up and went into his consulting-room. There, on a shelf among many companions, he found his note-book of 1874. He remembered. The time was winter; it was early in the year. He turned over the pages; he came to his notes. He read these words: "Child must have light hair, blue eyes; age – must be born as nearly as possible to December 2, 1872, date of dead child's birth."

"That's the date, sure enough," he said. "And the brain's just been working round to it, without my knowledge – of its own accord – started by that poor woman. Humph!"

He put back the note-book, and returned to the dining-room.

He sat down by the fire again, crossed his feet, lay back, took up the novel, and prepared for a comfortable hour.

In vain. That business of the adoption came back to him. The letters on the page melted into dissolving views: he saw the poor woman crying over the child, and clutching at the money which would save the boy from the workhouse and carry her to her husband; he saw the Indian ayah taking the child from him, and the lady bowing coldly from the railway carriage. "A lady through and through," said the doctor.

The torn envelope was addressed to "Lady – " She was a woman of title, then. He got up; on the bookshelves of the dining-room was a Red Book.

"Now," he said, "if I go right through this book from beginning to end, and if I should find the heir to something or Lord Somebody, born on December 2, 1872, I shall probably come upon the victim of this conspiracy – if there has been a conspiracy."

Luckily he began at the end, at the letter Z. Before long, under the fourth letter from the end, he read as follows: —

"Woodroffe, Sir Humphrey Arundale, second baronet; born at Poonah, December 2, 1872; son of Sir Humphrey Armitage Woodroffe, first baronet, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., formerly Lieut-Governor of Bengal, by Lilias, daughter of the fifteenth Lord Dunedin. Succeeded his father in 1888. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. Is a captain in the Worcestershire Militia. Residence, Crowleigh, Worcestershire, and Bryanston Square, London. Clubs, 'Junior United,' 'Travellers,' and 'Oriental.'"

"That's my man!" cried the doctor, with some natural excitement. "I believe I've found him. Then there has been substitution, after all, and not adoption! But, good Lord! it's Lady Woodroffe! Lady Woodroffe! It's the writer and orator and leader! Oh, purity! Oh, temperance! Oh, charity! What would the world say, if the world only knew?"

He threw the book aside and sat down. "I told that woman," he reflected, "that I knew nothing about the lady who carried off her child. Well, I did not know then. But I do know now. Must I tell her? Why disturb things? She can never find out. Let her go back to her adopted land. And as for this – this substitution – I promised solemnly that I would not speak about the business, even if I were to chance upon that lady, without her leave. My dear Mrs. Haveril, go home to America and forget the boy who is now the second baronet. Go home; it will be best for your health. 'The first step,' she said. Strange! The first step. But not for you, dear lady, not for you."

CHAPTER V.

GUEST NIGHT

"I am glad to see you again, Cousin Humphrey."

It was two months after the meeting in the churchyard. Hilarie's house was full; her guests overflowed into the village. It was, in fact, the first guest night of the season.

"This is the beginning of Term," she said. "You shall make acquaintance with the college."

"I have heard something about your college." He looked round the room, which was the lady's bower, as if in search of some one.

"You can take me in, and I will tell you more about it during dinner."

There were more than the house-party. The place is within an hour of Victoria, and a good many friends of the students had come out by train to see what the college was like; what it meant; and if it had come to stay.

A new social experiment always draws. First, it attracts the social wobblers who continually run after the last new gospel. Then it attracts those who watch social experiments from the outside. Thirdly, it attracts the New Woman herself; those who are curious about the New Woman; and those who hate the New Woman. Lastly, it attracts those who are always in search of material for "copy." For all these reasons, the guests present wore that expression of countenance called, by their friends, "thoughtful;" it should rather be called "uncertain." They looked about curiously, as if to find traces of the experiment in the furniture, on the walls, in the students' dresses; they listened in order to catch the note of the experiment in the air; they cast suspicious looks to right and to left, as expecting something to be sprung upon them. To be invited at all was to make them realize that they were in the very van and forefront of contemporary intellect; it also imposed upon them the difficult task of pronouncing a judgment without a "lead." Now, without a lead these philosophers are uncertain. Hence the aspect and appearance of the guests this evening. They did not know what to think or what to say of the college – no one had yet given them a lead; they were uncertain, and they would be expected to pronounce a judgment.

The oracle who waits for a "lead" is common among us; he takes himself seriously; he is said by his friends to have "made the most" of himself: not that he has distinguished himself in any way, but he has made the best out of poor materials, and he would have made himself a good deal bigger and better had the materials been richer. As it is, he reads all the thoughtful papers in all the magazines; he writes thoughtful papers of his own, which he finds a difficulty in placing; he sometimes gets letters into the papers giving reasons why he, being a very little man, cannot agree with some great man. This makes his chin to stick out. He even contrives to get people to read his letters, as if it matters a brass farthing whether he agrees or does not agree. Over a new social experiment, once he has got a "lead," this oracle is perfectly happy.

"We will talk presently," said Hilarie, turning to welcome new guests.

Humphrey stepped aside, and looked on while the room filled up. The students, he remarked, who were all dressed in white, with ribbons of their own individual choice, appeared to be a cheerful company of damsels. To be sure, cheerfulness belongs to their time of life, and to the profession of student, about which there should cling a certain lawless joyousness – a buoyancy not found in the domestic circle, a touch of the barrack, something of the camp, because they are recruits in the armies that fight against ignorance and prejudice. These white-robed students were full of cheerfulness, which bubbled over in laughter and happy faces. One is told that in some colleges there are students entirely given over to their studies, who wear dowdy dresses, who push back their hair anyhow behind their spectacles, who present faces of more than possible thoughtfulness. Here there were none such; none were oppressed with study.

Rightly considered, every college for young persons should be interesting. We have forgotten that there used formerly to be colleges for old persons; for priests, as Jesus Commons and the Papey on London Wall; for physicians; for surgeons; for serjeants-at-law; for debtors, as the Fleet; for the decayed, as an almshouse; for criminals, as Newgate; for paupers, as the workhouse. A college for girls is naturally more interesting than one for young men: first, because they are girls; next, because the male college contains so much that is disquieting, – ambition and impatience, with effort; strenuous endeavour to conciliate Fame, a goddess who presents to all comers at first a deaf ear, eyes that see nothing, and a trumpet silently dangling at her wrist; the resolution to compel Fortune, even against her will, to turn round that wheel which is to bear them up aloft. The strength of these ambitions stimulates the air – you may note this effect in any of the courts at Cambridge. One remembers, also, that in most cases Fame, however persistently wooed, continues to dangle the silent trumpet; while Fortune, however passionately invoked, refuses to turn the wheel; and that the resolution and determination of the petitioner go for nothing. One observes, also, that the courts of the colleges are paved with shattered resolutions, which make a much better pavement than the finest granite. One remembers, also, that there are found in the young man's college the Prig and the Smug, the Wallower, the Sloth, the Creeping Thing, and the Contented Creature. But pass across the road to the Woman's College. Heavens! what possibilities are there! What ambitions are hers! For her field is not man's field, though some pretend. Not hers to direct the throbbing engine, and make that thing of steel a thing of intelligence; not hers to command a fleet; not hers to make the laws. She does not construct lighthouses; she does not create new sciences; she does not advance the old; she never invents, nor creates, nor advances; she receives, she adapts, she distributes. How great are her possibilities! Though she neither creates nor invents, she may become a queen of song, a queen of the stage, a great painter, a great novelist, a great poet – great at artistic work of every kind. Or, again, while her brother is slowly and painfully working his way up, so that he will become a Q.C. at forty, a Judge at sixty, the girl steps at once by marriage into a position that dazzles her friends, and becomes a queen of society, a patron of Art, a power in politics. Far be it from me to suppose that the maidens of any college dream of possibilities such as these. Perhaps, however, the possibilities of maidenhood are never quite forgotten. There is another possibility also. Every great man has a mother. Do maidens ever dream of the supreme happiness of having a great man for a son? Which would a woman prefer, the greatest honour and glory and distinction ever won by woman for herself, or to be the mother of a Tennyson, a Gordon, a Huxley?

"Now, my cousin," said Hilarie. "The dinner is served."

So two by two they went into the old hall. It had been decorated since the summer. The lower part was covered with tapestry; the upper part was hung with armour and old weapons. There were also portraits, imaginary and otherwise, of women wise and women famous. Queen Elizabeth was there, Joan of Arc was there, George Sand, George Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jane Austen, Grace Darling, Rosa Bonheur, and many others. The male observer remarked, with a sense of omission, the absence of those queens of beauty whose lamentable lives make history so profoundly interesting. Where were Rosamond, Agnes Sorel, La Vallière, Nell Gwynne? Alas! they were not admitted.

"The house," said the president, taking her seat, "is much larger than it looks. With the solar and the lady's bower and the tower, we have arranged dormitories for forty and half a dozen sitting-rooms, besides this hall, which is used all day long."

The musicians' gallery had been rebuilt and painted. It contained an organ now and a piano, besides room for an orchestra. Six of the students were sitting there with violins and a harp, ready to discourse soft music during the banquet. There were three tables running down the hall, with the high table, and all were filled with an animated, joyous crowd of guests and residents.

"I want to interest you in my college," Hilarie began, when they were seated.