The Changeling. Walter Besant
a young man of twenty or thereabouts, still slight and boyish in figure. He had been sitting alone in the carriage.
From the second came a middle-aged man of the greatest respectability, to look at. He was so respectable, so eminently respectable, that he could not possibly be anything but a butler. With him was a completely respectable person of the other sex, who could be no other than a housekeeper.
In the third carriage there were two young maid-servants in black, and a boy in buttons. At the halting of the carriage they clapped their handkerchiefs to their eyes, because they knew what was expected on such an occasion; and they kept up this external show of grief until they had mounted the steps and the door was shut. The page, who was with them, had been weeping freely ever since they started; not so much from unavailing grief, as from the blackness of the ceremony, and the dreadful coffin, and the horror and terror and mystery of the thing. He went up the stairs snuffling, and so continued for the rest of the day.
The young gentleman mounted to the drawing-room, where his mother, sitting in a straight, high chair, more like an office-chair than one designed for a drawing-room, was dictating to a shorthand girl secretary. The table was covered with papers. In the back drawing-room two other girls were writing. For Lady Woodroffe was president of one society, chairman of committee of another, honorary secretary of a third; her letters and articles were on subjects and works of philanthropy, purity, rescue, white lilies, temperance, and education. Her platform advocacy of such works had placed her in the forefront of civilizing women; she was a great captain in Israel, a very Deborah, a Jael.
She was also, which certainly assisted her efforts, a very handsome woman still, perhaps austere: but then her eloquence was of the severe order. She appealed to the conscience, to duty, to responsibility, to honour. If sinners quailed at contemplating the gulf between themselves and the prophetess, who, like Jeremiah, had so little sympathy with those who slide backwards and enjoy the exercise, it was a perpetual joy to ladies of principle to consider an example so powerful.
She was dressed in black silk, but wore no widow's weeds; her husband, the first Sir Humphrey, had been dead four years.
The young gentleman threw himself into a chair. Lady Woodroffe nodded to her secretary, who gathered up her papers and retreated to the back drawing-room, closing the door.
"Well, mother," said the boy, carelessly, "we've buried the old woman."
"Yes. I hope you were not too much distressed, Humphrey. I am pleased that you went to the funeral, if only to gratify the servants."
"How could I refuse to attend her funeral?—an old servant like that. It's a beastly thing—a funeral,—and a beastly nuisance."
"We must not forget her services," the lady replied. "It was in return for those services that I kept her here, and nursed her through her old age. One does not encumber one's self with sick old women except in such cases as this."
"No, thank goodness." The young man was in no gracious mood. "Give me a servant who takes her wages and goes off, without asking for our gratitude."
"Still, she was your nurse—and a good nurse."
"Too ostentatious of her affection, especially towards the end."
"She was also"—Lady Woodroffe pursued her own thoughts, which was her way—"a silent woman; a woman who could be trusted, if necessary, with secrets—family secrets."
"Thank goodness, we've got none. From family secrets, family skeletons, family ghosts, good Lord, deliver us!"
"There are secrets, or skeletons, in every family, I suppose. Fortunately, we forget some, and we never hear of others. You are fortunate, Humphrey, that you are free from the vexation—or the shame—or the shock—of family secrets, which mean family scandals. Now, at all events, you are perfectly safe, because there is no one living who can create a family ghost for you, or provide you with a skeleton."
Humphrey laughed lightly. "Let the dead bury their dead," he replied. "So long as I know nothing about the skeleton, it can go on grinning in the cupboard, for aught I care.
"Did I tell you," the young man continued, after a pause, "of her last words?"
"What last words?"
"I thought I had told you. Curious words they were. I suppose her mind was wandering."
"Humphrey," said his mother, sharply, "what did she say? What words?"
"Well, they sent for me. It was just before the end. She was lying apparently asleep, her eyes shut. I thought she was going. The nurse was at the other end of the room, fussing with the tea-cups. Then she opened her eyes and saw me. She whispered, 'Low down, low down, Master Humphrey.' So I stooped down, and she said, 'Don't blame her, Master Humphrey. I persuaded her, and we kept it up, for your sake. Nobody suspects. All for your sake I kept it up,' Then she closed her eyes, and opened them no more."
"What do you understand by those words, Humphrey?"
"Nothing. I cannot understand them. She was accusing herself, I suppose, of something—I know not what. What did she keep up? Whom did she persuade? But why should we want to know?"
"Wandering words. Nurses will tell you that no importance can be attached to the last words when the brain wanders. Well, Humphrey, while you were at the funeral I unlocked her drawers and examined the contents. I found that she had quite a large sum of money invested. One is not in good service for all these years without saving something. There is a little pile of photographs of yourself at various ages. I have put them aside for you, if you like to have them."
"I don't want them," he replied carelessly.
"I shall keep them, then. There is her wardrobe also. I believe she had nephews and nieces and cousins in her native village in India. All her possessions shall be sent out to them. Meanwhile, there is a little packet of things which she tied up a great many years ago, and has kept ever since. The sight of them caused me a strange shock. I thought they had been long destroyed. They revived my memories of a day—an event—certain days—when you were an infant."
"What things are these, then?"
"They were your own things—some of the things which you wore when you were a child in arms, not more than a few months old."
"Oh, they are not very interesting, are they?"
"Perhaps not." Lady Woodroffe had in her lap a small packet tied up in a towel or a serviette. She placed it on the table. "Humphrey, I always think, when I look at old things, of the stories they might tell, if they could, of the histories and the changes which might have happened."
"Well, I don't know, mother. I am very well contented with things as they are, though they might have given my father a peerage. As for thinking of what they might have been, why, I might, perhaps, have been born in a gutter."
"You might, Humphrey"—the widow laughed, which was an unwonted thing in her—"you certainly might. And you cannot imagine what you would be now, had you been born in a gutter."
"What's the good of asking, then?"
"Look at this bundle of your things."
"I don't want to look at them."
"No, I dare say not. But I do. They tell a story to me which they cannot tell to you. I am glad the old woman kept them."
Lady Woodroffe untied the parcel, and laid open the things.
"The story is so curious that I cannot help looking at the things. I have opened the bundle a dozen times to-day, since I found it. I believe I shall have to tell you that story some day, Humphrey, whether I like it or not."
"What story can there be connected with a parcel of socks and shoes?"
"To you, at present, none. To me, a most eventful story. The old nurse knew the story very well, but she never talked about it. See, Humphrey, the things are of quite coarse materials—one would think they were made for that gutter child we talked about."
Her