"What, sir, is the meaning of this ill-mannered intrusion?" demanded the rector, sternly.
"You have pronounced the check I paid away at Bath to be a forgery; and the officers are, I am told, already at my heels. Mr. Arbuthnot, unfortunately, is not at home, and I am come, therefore, to seek shelter with you."
"Shelter with me, sir!" exclaimed the indignant rector, moving, as he spoke, toward the bell. "Out of my house you shall go this instant."
The fellow placed his hand upon the reverend gentleman's arm, and looked with his bloodshot eyes keenly in his face.
"Don't!" said Danby; "don't, for the sake of yourself and yours! Don't! I warn you; or, if you like the phrase better, don't, for the sake of me and _mine_."
"Yours, fellow! Your wife, whom you have so long held in cruel bondage through her fears for her son, has at last shaken off that chain. James Harper sailed two days ago from Portsmouth for Bombay. I sent her the news two hours since."
"Ha! is that indeed so?" cried Danby, with an irrepressible start of alarm. "Why, then--But no matter: here, luckily, comes Mrs. Arbuthnot _and her son_. All's right! She will, I know, stand bail for me, and, if need be, acknowledge the genuineness of her husband's check."
The fellow's insolence was becoming unbearable, and I was about to seize and thrust him forcibly from the apartment, when the sound of wheels was heard outside. "Hold! one moment," he cried with fierce vehemence. "That is probably the officers: I must be brief, then, and to the purpose. Pray, madam, do not leave the room for your own sake: as for you, young sir, I _command_ you to remain!"
"What! what does he mean?" exclaimed Mrs. Arbuthnot bewilderedly, and at the same time clasping her son--who gazed on Danby with kindled eyes, and angry boyish defiance--tightly to her side. Did the man's strange words give form and significance to some dark, shadowy, indistinct doubt that had previously haunted her at times? I judged so. The rector appeared similarly confused and shaken, and had sunk nerveless and terrified upon a sofa.
"You guess dimly, I see, at what I have to say," resumed Danby with a malignant sneer. "Well, hear it, then, once for all, and then, if you will, give me up to the officers. Some years ago," he continued, coldly and steadily--"some years ago, a woman, a nurse, was placed in charge of two infant children, both boys: one of these was her own; the other was the son of rich, proud parents. The woman's husband was a gay, jolly fellow, who much preferred spending money to earning it, and just then it happened that he was more than usually hard up. One afternoon, on visiting his wife, who had removed to a distance, he found that the rich man's child had sickened of the small-pox, and that there was no chance of its recovery. A letter containing the sad news was on a table, which he, the husband, took the liberty to open and read. After some reflection, suggested by what he had heard of the lady-mother's state of mind, he re-copied the letter, for the sake of embodying in it a certain suggestion. That letter was duly posted, and the next day brought the rich man almost in a state of distraction; but his chief and mastering terror was lest the mother of the already dead infant should hear, in her then precarious state, of what had happened. The tidings, he was sure, would kill her. Seeing this, the cunning husband of the nurse suggested that, for the present, his--the cunning one's--child might be taken to the lady as her own, and that the truth could be revealed when she was strong enough to bear it. The rich man fell into the artful trap, and that which the husband of the nurse had speculated upon, came to pass even beyond his hopes. The lady grew to idolize her fancied child--she has, fortunately, had no other--and now, I think, it would really kill her to part with him. The rich man could not find it in his heart to undeceive his wife--every year it became more difficult, more impossible to do so; and very generously, I must say, has he paid in purse for the forbearance of the nurse's husband. Well now, then, to sum up: the nurse was Mrs. Danby; the rich, weak husband, Mr. Arbuthnot; the substituted child, that handsome boy, _my son_!"