Chapter I: Trot’s History

Alexis wakes next morning with a throbbing head and a vague sense of trouble and regret; but upon the one question of his immediate return to the Grange his mind is fixed. There shall be no further delay. He has been long enough at Dorley--perhaps too long for his peace.

‘If any one had told me last Christmas that my heart could ever beat one throb in the minute faster for any woman living except my wife, I should have given him the lie boldly enough. Is it gratitude--respect--affection--that makes me think so much of my fair young nurse, and think it so hard a thing to part from her? Or is it a feeling that I am bound to stifle? I hardly know how to answer that question even to myself. At worst the sentiment is a mild one. Passion has no part in my love--if love it be. It is pure and reverent, and I will say no word that shall sully it. Yet I can but feel what new brightness might glorify my life if I were free to love this girl.’

He rises later than usual, and not before Trot has come to knock at his door and announce the hour.

‘Bekkust is weady for oo,’ says Trot; ‘oo eggs is boiled. Trot found ’em in the henhouse; Cothin Thina ones.’

‘Dear little Trot! How I shall miss that baby voice, and those pretty baby ways!’ thinks Alexis. ‘Coming presently, Trot,’ he cries cheerily, and Trot makes his way downstairs rather noisily, as he alights upon every stair with a jump.

It is noon when Alexis goes down to breakfast, a radiant summer noon, and the first strawberries from the garden are upon the table, nestling among their aristocratic leaves. Linda is seated in her accustomed place by the window, her inexhaustible work-basket by her side. When she is not working for her grandfather or Trot she is making clothes for the poorest among her neighbours.

‘You accused me of looking ill last night, Miss Challice,’ says Alexis as they shake hands; ‘and this morning I find you as pale as your lilies out yonder. What has happened to disturb you?’

‘I have been told what you did yesterday evening,’ answers Linda, gravely.

‘What, my little escapade with one of your amiable neighbours,’ cries Alexis, lightly. ‘You don’t mean to say people have been talking of such a trifle as that? I think I taught the gentleman that it’s bad manners to laugh at a sick man.’

‘Was it for laughing at you that you struck him, Mr. Secretan?’ asks Linda.

‘Certainly. My cadaverous looks provoked his mirth, and if I do resemble the Knight of the Rueful Countenance, I don’t choose to be laughed at before my face.’

‘Oh, Mr. Secretan, I know all that was said by that man. Elizabeth has been in the village this morning, and people have told her all that happened. It was the slander against me which you resented. The old cruel slander which has pursued me ever since I took pity upon that desolate child.’

The tears roll slowly down her cheeks, but she wipes them hastily away and regains composure. She is not one of those women who wash out their grief in tears.

‘No one shall slander you in my presence, Miss Challice, and go unpunished. I’m sorry I let that foul-mouthed ruffian off so easily.’

‘And you do not believe----you----’ Her voice fails her, and again the unbidden tears start to her eyes.

‘I believe anything against you? No, Linda. But if you would trust me with your secret----’

‘I have no secret,’ replies Linda, with a frank, steady look, more convincing than a world of protestation. ‘I have shrunk from talking to you of that dear little fellow’s history only because it is a very sad one, and because the scandal which he has brought upon us has made the subject particularly painful to me. I should have been weak and cowardly if I had consented to part with my little darling just because people are wicked enough to speak evil of me, but I am not so brave as to endure their slander without pain. I have suffered deeply.’

‘Tell me all, I entreat you. I think I love that child almost as well as you do. He is about the age my own son would have been had he lived--the son I never saw. That sounds curious, does it not? but the history of my marriage is a very painful one, Miss Challice, though I thank God it has no element of disgrace--and I----’ here he falters a little, as if the words he has to speak were somewhat difficult to say--‘I still have the hope of reunion with my wife.’

He may have some motive for speaking of Sibyl to-day, though she has been very little in his thoughts of late.

‘Tell me all about Trot’s birth.’

‘Let me see you begin your breakfast first. It’s rather a long story.’

‘I am all attention.’

‘It was about the end of March, three years ago, when I first saw Trot. It was a bleak afternoon, windy and cold. I had gone out into the front garden to look for the first wall-flowers, when I saw a woman leaning against the railings for support. I did not see at first that she had a baby in her arms, it was so hidden by an old sealskin jacket. I asked her if she was ill, and she said yes, she was ill and tired. She had walked all the way from Winchester. I asked her to come into the porch and rest. She came in, and had hardly seated herself when she fainted, and would have fallen if I had not managed to support her in my arms. Then the baby began to cry, and I saw him for the first time--such a tiny thing. Fortunately I was accustomed to young babies, from having visited a good deal among our cottagers.

‘And you took them in, mother and child, and sheltered and nourished them?’

‘What else could I do? Elizabeth and I soon discovered that the poor creature was starving. She had been living on penny rolls for the last fortnight--ever since she had left the workhouse, where her baby was born. Yes, that sounds dreadful, doesn’t it? Our darling Trot was born in Winchester Union.’

‘Dreadful indeed from society’s point of view. What kind of person was the mother?’

‘I can hardly tell you. She was very ill when we took her in--worn and wasted to a mere shadow. She must have been very pretty when she was happy and well, but her beauty was all gone. She was very reserved, and though I tried to win her confidence, she would tell me nothing about herself--what she had been in the past, or what she hoped to be in the future. She seemed very unhappy, and though she was evidently fond of her baby, he seemed rather to add to her unhappiness. I felt that her story must be a very sorrowful one.’

‘And you pitied her?’

‘With all my heart. One day when she had been with us about a week, and was beginning to get a little better and stronger, I asked her if she had any home to go to. She had been talking about leaving us in a day or two. Yes, she said, she had a home, and she was going to it, but she did not know what to do with her baby. There were reasons why she could not take the baby home. And then she asked me if I knew any honest woman in the village who would take care of the child for a year or two, and trust to her sending payment for its maintenance regularly after her return home. I told her that I was afraid none of our own villagers would take the responsibility of a stranger’s child. They would want to know who and what she was before they trusted her. Of course I said this as kindly as I could.’

‘As if you could be anything but kind!’ exclaims Alexis.

‘After this I could see she was very much disturbed in her mind. She sat with the baby in her lap, crying over it in a fretful way, and she was evidently in great trouble, and chiefly about the baby. I don’t know how it was, but just then there came into my mind the thought of all I had ever heard about wretched women killing their children. I thought of this poor creature wandering about the country penniless, friendless, with a wailing infant in her arms, and how in some dreadful hour wandering by the side of a river, the temptation might come to her to drown this sweet, innocent little thing, which, even in its unconsciousness, seemed to cling to me, and to be happier in my arms than in its mother’s.’

‘Doubtless infants, like the lower animals, have an instinct that tells them when they are beloved,’ remarks Alexis.

‘“If my grandfather would only let me keep your child!” I said, at which she burst into tears again, and threw her arms round my neck, and entreated me to take care of the little one, and promised me all kinds of rewards by-and-bye, when fortune smiled upon her. I told her I wanted no reward except the delight of making the little fellow happy, and teaching him to love me. I thought very little of the responsibility I was assuming, I am afraid. It seemed scarcely more to me than if I was offering to take care of another kitten to add to our family of pets.’

‘What did your grandfather say to the idea?’

‘Bless his kind heart, he never refused me anything in his life. He was rather against the notion at first, and he asked me if I had considered what a burden we should be taking upon ourselves, and what we were to do with the baby when it grew up. “A baby’s easy to keep;” he said; “a quart of new milk more or less won’t hurt us, but what shall we do when he’s a big fellow and wants schooling?” “He can go to the mill and work for his living,” I said. “Not if you bring him up as a pet and plaything,” said grandfather, “he’ll be too good for the mill.”’

‘And you had your way?’

‘Yes; I couldn’t get that idea about the river out of my mind, and I was determined the unhappy mother shouldn’t take the baby away, so I talked my dear old grandfather into giving his consent, and he promised to adopt the child. The poor creature went down on her knees to me when I told her that I would take care of her baby, but she was not any more inclined to confide in me than she had been at the very first; and two days afterwards she insisted upon leaving us, though I begged her to stay till she was stronger and better able to travel. She was resolute, so I gave her a couple of sovereigns, all the money I had of my own, and patched up her clothes a little. She was dreadfully shabby, poor thing, and at daybreak one morning she left us to walk to Winchester, where she was to take the parliamentary train to London.’

‘You are sure she was going to London?’

‘That is what she told me, and she was anxious to get to Winchester in time for the London train.’

‘She did not even tell you her name?’

‘No. “I might give you a false name,” she said, “but what would be the use of that? If I live, and things prosper with me, you shall know all about me some day.”’

‘That was vague,’ says Alexis. ‘Did she wear a wedding ring?’

‘Yes, but she told me that it was one she had bought for a penny. “I sold the real one to buy bread,” she said.’

‘And she left her child without showing any grief?’

‘No, just at the last she broke down, clasped him to her breast, and cried over him bitterly.’

‘Have you heard nothing of her since that time?’

‘I have had no actual communication. But I have received three ten-pound notes at intervals each in a blank envelope, posted in London. I have put the money into the savings bank for my darling.’

‘And the envelopes, you kept them, I suppose?’

‘No, they were directed in a cramped unformed hand, like that of a very common person. I cannot think that it was the writing of Trot’s mother, yet I feel sure the money must have come from her.’

‘There was nothing written inside the envelope?’

‘Not a word. The bank note was wrapped in a blank sheet of paper.’

‘Provoking!’ exclaims Alexis. ‘I would give a great deal to know more about Trot’s origin. His name of Trot, by the way, how did he come by that?’

‘It is only a pet name which my grandfather gave him when he first began to walk and was always trotting about the house. He was christened William after my grandfather, who stood for him. We had him christened the week after his mother left us.’

‘Poor little Trot, but for you he might have been left outside the fold. Poor little Trot, born in a workhouse, abandoned by his mother, fatherless, nameless! Well, Miss Challice, his schooling shall never trouble you or your grandfather. We’ll send him to Winchester when he’s old enough, and to Oxford after, and make a man of him. That shall be my duty, and it may be some small return for all the care you and your worthy grandfather have bestowed upon me.’

‘You are too good. Believe me, we need no recompense.’

‘No more did the good Samaritan. How long is it, by the way, since you received the last bank note?’

‘Not more than two months ago. It came while you were very ill.’

‘I thank you most sincerely for having told me this story. I am deeply interested in Trot, deeply moved by your goodness to him. It is a hard thing that such an act of divine charity should have brought sorrow upon you. It makes me detest your innocent rustics.’

‘Do not blame them. It arises out of their ignorance----’

‘No,’ cries Alexis sternly, ‘it arises out of their knowledge of evil, and incapacity to believe in good.’