Lady Drysdale's Theft

by Edgar Jepson

Lady Drysdale's Theft

By Edgar Jepson

THE two women were dressed in black of a very different quality; and the woman with the baby was a widow. She wore the cheap black, but the baby's clothes did not match it—they were white clothes with black bows about them, and the stuff was fine. He was a clean and rosy, fair-haired baby, accepting everything with unwondering blue eyes, since everything alike passed understanding; but he drew his mother's attention to things of interest, the red automatic machines and the white horses drawing trucks in a siding, with a waggle of his arm and an inarticulate, but quite comprehensible, murmur on two notes, a low note and then a higher, prolonged, "Ah—eh—h—h!" His mother gave him but a distracted attention; for the most part her sad eyes gazed down the vista of the railway at a vision of a South African battle-field. When at his murmur she turned her face to him, it lost its sad dreaminess and shone with the divine passion; she almost smiled when she spoke to him.

Lady Drysdale watched the baby with eyes which never left him, eyes filled with the last covetous hunger; sometimes there gleamed in them an envy very near a veritable hatred of his mother. Now and then she twisted her hands in a very passion of greed. Twice she made a step towards him and checked herself, staring round a little wildly. In the violence of her desire she actually dared not trust herself to speak to him. Lost in her unhappiness, his mother saw nothing of it.

Presently the train came in, and lady Drysdale watched the mother climb into a third-class compartment "for ladies only," and bidding the wondering porter, who had opened the door of a first-class compartment for her, bring in her wraps and dressing-bag, climbed in after them and, with a happy sigh, sat down in the corner farthest from the mother and child. The train started. The mother sat in a spiritless dejection, holding the baby so that he could stand and look out of the window. Now and again, when he drew her attention to something of interest with more than usual emphasis, she roused herself to talk to him awhile, but she soon fell back into her unhappy reverie. Lady Drysdale's gaze never left him, and once or twice he looked at her with familiar eyes, as though he knew her quite well, and every look thrilled her.

Then she played her trump-card: she took her dressing-bag down from the rack and, opening it, revealed the shining row of silver-stoppered bottles.

The baby had turned at her movement, and at the shining sight his eyes opened very wide; he murmured "Ah—eh—h—h!" and began to struggle against his mother's arm. She looked round, saw the open dressing-bag, and held him tighter.

"Ah—eh—h—h! Ah—eh—h—h!" he said. His lower lip went down, and he burst into a roar of anguished disappointment.

"Oh, let him come! Let him come!" cried Lady Drysdale, eagerly.

"He will bother you," said his mother, reluctantly.

"No, no," said Lady Drysdale, earnestly.

His mother set him on the floor, and he rushed wildly down the carriage and tumbled up against Lady Drysdale's knee. Her hands shook so that she could scarcely lift him on to the seat beside her; he nearly dived into the bag in his eagerness to handle the bright treasures. She gave him bottle after bottle, until he wallowed in bottles, clamouring his shrill joy. His mother watched him a little while, and then fell back into her unhappiness. Lady Drysdale took him on to her knee, a bottle in either hand, and he tried to explain to her, in his inarticulate fashion, the intimate connection of these shining things with the ultimate mysteries; life and education had blunted her understanding.

Presently it was time for him to be fed, and his mother took a bottle of some baby food out of her shabby little bag, poured some into a mug, invested him with a napkin, and fed him. After it he ate a sponge-cake and a banana—travelling had not spoiled his appetite. Lady Drysdale took him on her knee and gave him the banana in bites of the proper size. When, after being filled, he went to sleep in Lady Drysdale's arms, with the freemasonry of mothers the two women began to exchange confidences. They cried over the death of Lady Drysdale's little boy, whom she had lost just nineteen months before at the exact age of the sleeping child, and who, she said again and again, was extraordinarily like him, of the same colouring, the same eyes, and the same ways. Then they cried over the death of the widow's husband, an Imperial Yeoman killed in South Africa. At last the baby's mother was moved by Lady Drysdale’s sympathy to confide to her her horrible dread of the future. She was on her way to London to live with her people; London did not suit the boy, and she was tortured by the fear of his pining away there. Moreover, her stepmother did not like her, and hated children: she would he unkind to him. Lady Drysdale pressed him closer to her, and schemes for saving him began In float through her mind.

She was silent, thinking hard. Suddenly there came a grinding, grating jar, and the carriage swayed and jerked. Lady Drysdale was conscious of curling instinctively round the child to shield him, of being flung here and there; then came at great crash, and all was still. She was roused from the shock by the screams of the child, and she found herself lying, still curled round him, on the top of his mother. The carriage seemed to be on its side, and they lay in a heap across the lower windows of it. Shaken and dazed, she drew herself off the child's mother, and began hurriedly, with trembling fingers, to feel his head and arms and legs and ribs: none of his bones were broken, and he screamed with a reassuring vigour. She set him down and turned to his mother. She lay, deathly white, in a huddled heap. Lady Drysdale tried to lift her into an easier position; her head hung limp on her shoulders; she put her hand behind it, and found the back of it all crushed. She wiped her hand on the cushion, and thrust it into the injured woman's dress over her heart; there was not a beat.

In the first shock of horror she was stricken with panic, and, catching up the child, in a furious desire to be out of this chamber of death, she screamed again and again for help. Presently two men looked down through the windows above her head and opened the door. She thrust up the child into their hands, and when they had set it down they caught her wrists and began to haul her up. Using the supports of the rack as steps, she relieved them of some of her weight and was dragged out She sank down sobbing beside the child; and the two men, bidding her not give way, went on to the next compartments to haul more people out.

She soon recovered enough to start soothing the child. At the sight of some blood on his mouth her heart sank with the fear of internal injury. It was only a cut lip. The soothing him composed her, and she began to think clearly, gazing round at the scene. The train had run off the line; the engine, wantoning in its freedom, had ploughed its way up to an elm tree and tried to butt it down. Three carriages lay on their sides; their passengers were hobbling or crawling about on the upper sides of them; some were still dragging people up out of the compartments. Three carriages still stood on the metals, and the two others stood in a crooked slant on the embankment. The passengers from these were streaming about the fallen ones. The air was filled with a mingled clamour; the engine in a cloud of steam was sizzling shrilly; the passengers were shouting inquiries, suggestions about getting down, and theories of the cause of the catastrophe at one another; women were in hysterics.

It seemed to Lady Drysdale that she and the boy might have been in a desert for all the notice anyone took of them; and, frightened by the din, he clung to her, clutching her tightly, his little body shaken by great sobs after his crying. She had but realized their loneliness when a sudden idea sprang up in her mind and filled it on the instant with a very rage of possession. Why should she not take the boy? She began quickly to consider the matter and her chances of getting him. His father was dead. ... His mother was dead. ... No one wanted him. ... At any rate, his mother had made it plain to her that his grandfather and grandmother, who alone had a right to him, did not want him. ... She wanted him! ... Oh, how she wanted him! ... he was the living image of her dead child. ... Heaven had given him to her instead of her lost darling. ... Besides, she had a right to him, for she had saved his life. ... And, again, she could give him the proper care and love. ... She would take him! ... Right or wrong, she would take him!

In this cursory and disjointed fashion she settled. the moral question, and turned to the practical matter of stealing him. She looked round carefully and, under the impulse of her purpose, stealthily. The passengers were still busy with their injuries and theories of the cause of the catastrophe. She made up her mind to sever all connection between herself and the wrecked train, and she scanned the country. A couple of hundred yards from the line a high road ran parallel with it; beyond rose a great slope of woods and fields, up the slope ran a white footpath. The slope seemed familiar to her; at any rate, her path with the child lay over it. Somewhere on the other side was a railway other than the North-Western which would carry them to London.

She went to the edge of the carriage roof, called imperiously to an excited old gentleman, and handed the boy down to him. He was too excited to refuse or even protest. He held him gingerly, gasping. She lowered herself over the edge of the carriage and, getting a foot-hold on the rim of the lamp-hole, jumped from it to the ground and relieved him of his burden.

"This is the result of carelessness—gross carelessness!" stuttered the old gentleman. "I tell you, madam, they have neglected to look after the metals. I call it perfectly——"

“Where are we?” said Lady Drysdale, cutting him short.

"They tell me we are two miles north of King's Langley. Such wanton carelessness is quite inconceivable? I can't understand——"

She turned her back on him and walked alongside the fallen carriages towards the end of the field. She knew where she was; the winter before her marriage her people had been kept in town and she had come down here twice a week to hunt. Over the slope, ten miles across country, she could strike the Metropolitan at Rickmansworth and take a train to Baker Street. No one could connect her and the boy with the wrecked train if they landed in London at Baker Street.

Whenever they passed one of the noisy, argumentative groups the baby clutched her and nestled his face against her cheek. Every time he did it he set her heart hammering against her ribs and hardened her in her purpose. She turned up the hedgerow towards the high-road, climbed over three fences, and came into it opposite the foot-path up the slope. She crossed the stile and began to mount it quickly, casting timorous glances behind her to see if she were followed; once she thought that she saw people pointing at her from the wrecked train. She set her teeth, hugged the boy to her, and pressed on the quicker. She could not feel her bruises for the joy of having him.

She walked for nearly an hour, then she had to stop; a baby of nineteen months is no light weight, and for all that she was strong and in good condition, her arms and legs and back were aching. She climbed over a stile into a meadow, far over the brow of the slope; set him down, threw herself down beside him, and abandoned herself to her joy in him. She hugged him, kissed him, nuzzled him, laughed over him, and cried over him. He took her tenderness in very good part and made no complaint; indeed, when at last she lay still, he clambered about her with chuckles of infinite delight; always he looked at her with familiar eyes.

Presently he turned his attention to Nature, and made little rushes at flowers near them, invariably falling flat on the object of his desire. He had been trained to bravery; he did not howl at a tumble; he only grunted and pulled himself up again. He knew, too, what to do with a flower when he had plucked it: he sniffed at it. She watched him in an absorbed, unfathomable joy; the intolerable hunger which had gnawed her was blunted.

She was loth to tear herself away from her delightful watching; but at last she rose and moved slowly down the path, letting him toddle before her, or leading him by the hand. He would go a little way with thoughtful dignity, pointing out things of interest with a waggling arm, and saying, "Ah—eh—h—h!"; then he would make a wild rush at at flower, and she would save him from the ditch. She walked inn vast content, drinking in with greedy eyes and ears his every look, movement, and murmur. For the first time since her loss the sun was really shining, and she heard the birds singing.

The path ended in a lane running downwards between high hedges; and on the instant, with a cry of delight, the boy sat down in the thick dust and began to play with it. with this sport to his hand there was no keeping him on his feet, and she picked him up and carried him. The lane ran into another lane running along the bottom of a valley, and turning to the left she plodded steadily on. At about four she came into a small village, and was very glad to rest her weary body in the parlour of the little inn. She fed the boy on warm milk and bread and butter; and it was such a delight to her that she could have wished him to go on eating and drinking for ever. The landlady came in once or twice and called him a pretty dear and a fine child; Lady Drysdale resented her interest, but she was careful to gratify her rustic curiosity with a story of how she had brought the boy down from London to Rickmansworth to spend a day in the country, and had wandered with him hither. While she took her own tea the boy enjoyed a splendid time with a large cat—the cat rather endured than enjoyed it. After tea she played with him a little; then, since the landlady could not persuade the baker, who owned the only trap in the village, to drive her to Rickmansworth, she took the boy and went to him herself. There are not many men who could refuse Lady Drysdale anything in their power to give her, if she put herself about to coax it out of them; certainly the simple but grumpy baker was not one of them; and in twenty minutes she was being jolted along to the station. She had to wait there but a very few minutes for a train, and reached London at six.

She changed her cab in Oxford Street, that there might be no tracing her from Baker Street to Grosvenor Square; let herself into her house, and gained her room without meeting a servant, so that none of them could have told exactly at what hour she came home. But as soon as she had taken off her hat and the boy's hat and coat she rang for her maid, and after telling her that she had adopted the boy, a Berkshire child, that she might spread that quite inaccurate information, she ordered her to set the servants to work to bring down the cot and baby's bath from upstairs, and to send out for baby food. The boy appeared pleased with the pretty room, and showed his approval by tearing the draping round the toilet-table, in the intervals of waggling his arm and murmuring "Ah—eh—-h-h!" at all the bright things on it.

Lady Drysdale prepared his food herself, and then she set about giving him his bath. In the middle of it the fancy came to her that he was her little dead baby come back to her; he was so like him, not only in his little body, but in his ways of splashing the water, of playing with the soap and the sponge, of crowing his delight; besides, never had he looked at her as at a stranger. She thrust the fancy away from her, but it would come hack. When she had fed him and rocked him to sleep, and sat watching him, she played with the fancy. Could such things be? Why could not such things be? As her baby died, this one bad been born. The tearing clutch of little dead hands was loosening from her heart.

Presently she heard her husband come in and up the stairs, not three steps at a time, as he had used to come on the chance of finding their boy still awake, but slowly. He opened the door and looked in, and at the sight of the cot he started, and stared with all his eyes. She beckoned him, and, coming softly, he stood by the cot staring down at the sleeping child in a bewildered fascination.

"Good heavens!" he said, softly. "It's the boy!"

In a low voice she told him of her theft and her precautions. He listened in a dull wonder, staring at the child. When she had done, he said nothing; he only gazed and gazed. She shook his arm in a feverish impatience, and said in a husky, grasping voice, "I must have him, Dick! I must—I must! I tell you he is mine!"

"By the Lord, you shall!" said Lord Drysdale, waking up.

The next day Lady Drysdale and the boy were on their way to Munich. Her husband stayed behind to watch events. The baby's unfortunate mother was identified by her stepmother, and when that lady found no baby awaiting her care she was exceedingly guarded in her inquiries about him. In the end she seemed to take it very easily for granted that he had fallen into charitable hands, and even seemed pleased to be rid of the responsibility. She told the railway officials that the child could not have been travelling with his mother. Lord Drysdale contrived to see her—a thin-lipped, narrow-faced, small-eyed woman; and the sight of her face sent him to Munich justified, in his own eyes, in keeping the child out of her clutches. The boy, with a waggling arm and his murmur of "Ah-eh-h-h!" points out to his new parents things of interest in the European capitals; soon he will have grown out of the recognition of anyone who knew him in England. His new parents are devoted to him.