Chapter IV: The Woman Was Growing Human

It was a daring scheme, and one very difficult to carry into execution; but she was a daring woman and a cunning one, and she went warily to work.

Such a thing as a pauper woman stealing an unknown orphan child from the workhouse had never been heard of; such a case had certainly never been brought before the guardians; their difficulty was not how to secure and keep children, but how to dispose of those they had got. Still Helen knew that the law was stringent, and that it would be utterly useless for her to ask for Robin.

And yet she _must_ have him.

She set her wits to work. Robin's illness was favourable to her designs, otherwise she could never have carried them out.

It so happened that at this time the workhouse infirmary in David's Row was undergoing considerable alterations, and was in consequence more or less in a state of confusion. There was no regular ward fitted up for infectious cases, which, as a rule, were instantly removed to the hospitals; but Robin being a baby and a favourite, and his illness being very slight, the matron put him into a small room apart from the rest of the building, and this room he and his nurse had quite to themselves.

He was quickly well again, but was not allowed to return to the other wards on account of infection; and Helen, now perfectly recovered herself, remained also to nurse him.

The woman was growing human and happy, when one day, after the doctor's visit, she was told that she would receive her discharge that day week. She would have been sent away sooner but for her services to the boy.

Then the design she had only hitherto thought of calmly, and in the distance, came close. In a week she was to go, and Robin must go too--she would not stir from the workhouse without him; no, no power should drag her from the child.

She was sorely puzzled how to act, and in this difficulty, had she known anything really of God, she would have certainly asked Him to help her; as it was, however, she lay awake all night thinking out her own plan, which was quite bold and clever enough. When she had thought it well out, she grew calm and played again with Robin. No fear of her courage failing her in carrying it out.

Helen had a cousin, the young woman who used to share her attic; and this woman also had a child--a child about Robin's age.

How Helen had hated that child after her own had died! But if she hated it, neither did its mother love it. She was not like Helen; she considered her baby a burden, and openly expressed her wish that it might die, or that she could get rid of it.

This woman came very often to see Helen; generally, for the simple reason that she could not leave it at home, bringing her child with her. This child had also just recovered from the measles; therefore, on the score of infection, it was not required to be kept away.

They came, the cousin and her child, the day after Helen had heard the news that she was to leave. To this woman Helen confided her plan in a few short, well-chosen sentences. The woman listened, demurred, hesitated, finally yielded. She agreed to do what Helen wished, and promised without fail to come to see her the day before Helen left.

It was a very daring and dangerous plan, but Helen would run any risk to obtain possession of Robin.

So softened and changed was she that the matron took a fancy to her, believed her to be of a more respectable class than her neighbours, trusted her more than they, and above all things, what Helen most wished, left her a good deal to herself.

On the appointed day, true to her appointment, Helen's visitor, bearing the baby, arrived. The visitor's baby was a brown-tinted child of the gipsy type; his hair had been cut off in the measles.

"Yere's the dye," said the woman, "and yere's the brat. Don't keep me, Helen, fur, I can tell yer, I'm in a reg'lar fright."

"I won't keep you," said Helen, her white lips working a trifle, her dark eyes flashing. Quick as thought, she transferred the clothes of the one baby to the other, snipped off Robin's bright locks, smeared his little face with the ugly brown dye, and, hoping to quiet any terror he might feel, pushed a lollipop into his mouth. Then she placed him in her cousin's arms, who declared with a laugh that she would not know him anywhere from her own.

"Then go," said Helen, almost pushing her from the room.

The strange baby left behind cried feebly on the workhouse bed, and the workhouse baby shouted lustily as he was carried away; but crying babies were no anomaly, and Robin passed muster as the child who had been brought in half an hour before.

Thus did he escape from the workhouse, from its good and its evil, and thus did the world receive him to train him up as she thought best.

How many evil things were waiting for the pure and innocent child on that evil day! Grinding poverty, to reduce his strength; famine, to dim his bright young eyes; beggary, to teach him a thousand lessons in skulking and lying; crime, to make him the plague of the streets and the victim of the law--then the prison, perhaps the gallows; and all this because he had won a woman's love, and softened a woman's wild and breaking heart.

Would it not have been possible, just barely possible, that had a brother and sister sought out and taken hold of this brother and sister, they might have led them, through their love for one another, into a right way?

Then the voices calling Robin would have been, not poverty, but honest independence; not famine, but enough and to spare; not beggary, but the labour of his hands; not crime, but godliness; not the prison, but the home; not the gallows, but a crown of life. Alas! no brother proved himself brother, no Christian in a Christian land came to the rescue.