Chapter V: A Father’s Claim

Alexis scarcely knows what he is doing during that scamper back to Cheswold Grange.

Titmouse, inspirited by the knowledge that she is going home to her stable and two o’clock feed, throws her shoulders forward and sends out her feet, trotting as if for a wager.

‘Take off her bridle and give her some corn,’ says Alexis to the groom who receives him. ‘I shall want her again in ten minutes.’

He goes to the library, unlocks a despatch box, and takes out an oblong velvet case, containing his wife’s portrait--a picture taken by a famous photographer during their bright Parisian honeymoon,--the portrait of a girl-bride, lovely, elegantly dressed, smiling at the unknown future, and unconscious that these happy, idle honeymoon hours were eating up the capital that should have served to start husband and wife in the business of life. It is a photograph of Sibyl at her best--before secret cares and hypocrisies had wrought their lines on her fair young face.

Alexis contemplates the picture regretfully for a few moments before he puts it in his pocket.

‘Yes, she was very lovely then,’ he tells himself. ‘And there is nothing in this face that bespeaks a heart capable of treachery or deceit. It was poverty’s bitter school that spoiled her. Some noble spirits grow strong by treading the rough ways of life--hers was too weak to survive the ordeal of misfortune. Poor child, she must have suffered!’

He is on Titmouse again and returning to Dorley in a few minutes, very much against the mare’s inclination. She indulges in a stubborn crawl, or, being touched up with the whip, jogs and jolts her rider in an irregular trot, expressive of supreme ill-temper. Urged out of this, she sets off in a furious canter, as if to inform him that she has some ‘go’ left in her yet, in spite of ill-usage, and may contrive to pitch him over her head if he is too aggravating.

These devices finally bring Alexis to Dorley, where he finds Linda and Trot in the front garden, evidently on the watch for him.

‘I am so glad you have returned,’ cries Linda. ‘You have made me quite miserable.’

‘Forgive me, dear Miss Challice, but if you knew what hopes that one little word Redcastle have raised in my mind! See here’--he takes the case from his pocket and shows her Sibyl’s photograph,--‘does that face remind you of any face you have ever seen before?’

‘Yes,’ she answers, pale to the lips, but without an instant’s hesitation, ‘it is the portrait of Trot’s mother. She was not so beautiful as that. She was thin and worn and haggard, but I should recognise the eyes and mouth anywhere. It is she.’

‘This is the portrait of my wife, Linda; and Trot, the helpless baby you adopted in order to save him from the hazards of his mother’s distraction or despair, is my son.’

‘You told me your son was dead.’

‘I was taught to believe so. My wife, for some mysterious reason, told me that cruel lie. She was ashamed, perhaps, of having abandoned our child to the care of another, and feared to tell me the truth.’

‘Are you sure?’ falters Linda. ‘You are not deceiving yourself and me?’

‘If you are sure that this picture is the portrait of Trot’s mother, there can be no doubt that Trot is my son.’

‘And you will take him away from me,’ says Linda, piteously; ‘just when he has grown most dear. After all I have suffered--all I have borne patiently for his sake--I am to lose him. That is hard.’

‘If you knew how I have pined for a son, Linda--what day-dreams I have woven about my little one’s image--how bitter a grief I felt when I was told that wicked lie about his death--you would understand my rapture at finding him, my eagerness to claim him for my own--my darling, my hope, my precious care, heir to the fortune that Providence has dropped into my lap--poorly deserved on my part Heaven knows. He shall be better worthy of it.’

‘Yes,’ murmurs Linda, faintly, ‘I can understand. It is only natural. He is your son; your rights are sacred.’

‘And you have suffered for his sake, Linda. Your generosity has been rewarded by the world’s injustice. But I can set all right. I shall claim him for my own, and every one round and about Cheswold and Dorley shall know all his story. Yes, I will not blush to tell the whole bitter truth. How my wife left me in poverty, and how my son was born in a workhouse.’

They are standing in the parlour, Trot watching their excited countenances, with wonder depicted upon his own.

‘You have a right to take him away,’ says Linda, sadly, ‘but I think you will take all the sunshine of our lives with him. My grandfather is almost as fond of him as I am.’

‘I am not going to dissever old links, Linda. He shall come often to see you. He shall be taught to know you as the guardian angel of his infancy; he shall always remember his first home.’

‘Yes, but it will be his home no longer,’ replies Linda, with a sigh.

Alexis is silent. He feels that he must seem a wretch, a destroyer, entering this happy household only to ruin its joy. But how can he forego his claim? How can he relinquish the delight of watching his son’s infancy develop into boyhood--guiding the baby mind, making the boy at once pupil and plaything, source of all his pleasures in the present and all his hopes in the future?

At this juncture Trot, who has listened intently, arrives at the comprehension that he has a personal interest in the conversation. He catches at the idea that he is to be taken away--transferred from mammie to the genlamum, and he suddenly bursts in upon the conversation with a dismal howl.

‘Me won’t be took away; me stay with mammie,’ cries the boy, and he clambers up into Linda’s arms, and clings there as if resolved to resist any attempt at dislodging him.

‘What, Trot,’ cries Alexis, smiling at the little one’s excitement, ‘won’t you come and live with me, and have a dear little Shetland pony to ride, and a big garden to play in, and a rocking-horse,--and a--lots of plum cakes and picture-books?’ Here Alexis’s knowledge of juvenile weaknesses fails him, and he knows not what further temptation to offer.

‘Me won’t have pony, me not want oor garden, me got nice big garden, me want mammie,’ cries Trot, and he clings still tighter to Linda.

‘Trot, shall I tell you a secret?’

‘’Ess,’ says Trot, who thinks that a secret must needs be something worth hearing.

‘You must come and live with me, Trot, my darling. God meant you and me to live together. I’m your father!’

‘No, you not,’ screams the boy, ‘you’re the genlamum with the broken arm. Me never have no fazer.’

‘And you won’t come to live at the Grange? Such a large garden, six times as big as the garden here, and a Shetland pony with a long tail.’

‘Me won’t,’ cries Trot, emphatically. ‘Bozer de pony!’

‘Trot has decided, Miss Challice,’ says Alexis, gravely. ‘If I were ungrateful enough, selfish enough, to wish to take him from you, his childish heart is true and fast. He shall stay with you, since you wish it, for the next few years at any rate. This shall be his home, and he shall come to Cheswold only as a visitor. You will let me have him sometimes?’

‘Let you have him! Oh, Mr. Secretan, are you not too generous in consenting to leave him with me?’

‘I should be an ungrateful hound if I could refuse. You have made my son’s infancy bright and happy. You have saved him from the evils of poverty--from his mother’s selfishness. How can I be grateful enough to you?’

‘Only let me keep my darling a little longer, and I am more than recompensed. I must be proud and happy too, when I have recovered a little from this surprise, to know that he is your son--that his future will be bright and prosperous--his worldly position honourable,--to think that my little waif and stray should be the future squire of Cheswold. My grandfather will be so pleased. It is a triumph for me over him, dear old man, for he said that I was very foolish to adopt a nameless child, and now my dearest has name and fortune, home and father.’

‘We will make a good man of him between us, Miss Challice,’ says Alexis, more elated by this discovery than he was by the inheritance of Miss Secretan’s estate. He has no doubt as to Trot’s identity--there seems to him no room for doubt, yet he is anxious to make things as certain as possible--to secure independent evidence in case his claim to his son should ever be disputed.

He goes back to the Grange only to get a fresh horse, and then rides into the quiet old cathedral town to talk the matter over with Mr. Scrodgers. He does not consider the provincial solicitor a Mansfield or a Cockburn; but Mr. Scrodgers’s is the best legal intellect available on the spot, and to Mr. Scrodgers he goes.

The family solicitor listens to all Alexis has to tell with the gravity of a learned owl that has lived a century or so in the same ivy bush. He contracts his eyebrows, he purses up his lips, and looks as if he had known the whole story before, but, for some wise reason he had kept his knowledge to himself.

‘A curious case, Mr. Secretan,’ he says at last, ‘a very curious case. It’s lucky your estate is not entailed.’

‘Why so?’

‘There might have been difficulties in the way of succession. It might not be easy to identify this infant--born in such a very irregular manner--as your son and heir. There might be suspicions. The heir-at-law might file a bill in Chancery. I should consider it a very hazardous business were your estate entailed; but you as an independent man, fettered by no entail, may leave your real property to Tom, Dick, or Harry. I should recommend you to take this infant into your house at once, let him bear your name, let him be recognised by all your acquaintances as your son.’

‘Yes, I shall take care of that. I shall tell everybody. But there is a difficulty about bringing him into my house. The lady who brought him up--who rescued him from I know not what misery--has a claim upon his affection, the strongest, and as strong a claim on my gratitude. To take him away from her would be almost to break her heart.’

‘Almost, but not quite. There’s a long distance between the two adverbs,’ replies the cynical Scrodgers. ‘Most women have their hearts almost broken once in their lives. Give her a new bonnet.’

‘You do not know the lady, sir. She is not a woman to be solaced by a bonnet.’

‘Hasn’t she a head?’ asks Mr. Scrodgers. ‘I never knew a woman, with a head, that a bonnet wouldn’t pacify. Half the cases at the assizes, in which the female is a plaintiff, might be settled out of court if the defendant knew when and how to offer the _solatium_ of a bonnet.’

‘I see, Mr. Scrodgers, you are a bachelor and a misogynist,’ says Alexis, smilingly.

‘No, sir,’ replies the lawyer, ‘I am a misogynist, and a married man.’

‘The first thing I have to do is to alter my will,’ says Alexis, returning to the business question.

‘Decidedly. If you are convinced that this infant--hereinbefore named--is your son, you had better make a will in his favour.’

‘Prepare one as fast as you can, Mr. Scrodgers, leaving the bequest to my good friend Plowden just as it stands.’

‘You must have trustees in case of your dying before the child attains his majority.’

‘Make Plowden trustee.’

‘You should have a second, in the event of Mr. Plowden’s death.’

‘How you lawyers remind us of our mortality! Well, make Miss Challice the second trustee and guardian of the boy in case of my death. Nobody will ever love him better than she does.’

‘And in the event of her marriage----’

‘Marriage would make no difference in her. She would always love my boy.’

Mr. Scrodgers relieves his doubtful mind by a faint smile. His idea of marriage is that it makes a very great difference. To his legal mind marriage transforms a man. Even the will he made as a bachelor is no longer valid, proving that in the eye of the law the married man and the bachelor are two distinct personages.

‘Then you would recommend me to get together all the evidence I can bearing upon my boy’s birth says Alexis.

‘I think it would be wise to do so. The fact of your parentage may never be disputed. You can dispose of the Cheswold estate as you choose, but still it might be well to have all necessary documents--an attested copy of your marriage certificate, and so on.’

‘Yes, I was a reckless fellow when I married. Heaven knows what became of the certificate. My wife may have kept it. Certainly I didn’t take any care of it. The parson had made her my wife. That was all I thought about on that bewildering day.’

‘Then you had better get a copy of the register without delay.’

‘Yes, and I will go to the woman with whom my wife and I lodged. She will remember that my wife was expecting to become a mother when she left me. If that woman is to be found I will get from her a written declaration of that fact.’

‘It would be as well to do so,’ says Mr. Scrodgers, approvingly, and Alexis leaves him to prepare the new will, which he is to bring to the Grange early next morning.

‘Stay,’ says the lawyer, on the threshold. ‘You haven’t told me the infant’s Christian name.’

‘He was christened William.’

‘No other name?’

‘I believe not. But you can fill in the names to-morrow. I will ask that question in the meantime.’

Alexis goes back to Cheswold pondering on the lawyer’s advice about his son. Mr. Scrodgers has distinctly said that it is for the child’s welfare, for the security of his future position, that he should be domiciled with his father; and Alexis longs to have the little one under the same roof with him, to see him daily, hourly, to watch over him sleeping and waking, to make him his plaything and companion. Against this natural desire there is the promise he has made to Linda Challice--the debt of gratitude he owes her. Hard to break that promise--hard to ignore that debt.