CHAPTER VII.

SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE

There was no doubt about it; there, in the very middle of their pile of light luggage, some of which had been carefully displaced to make room for it, the three young men found the substantial basket they had last seen under the arm of the peasant girl on the quay; and in the basket, lightly covered over by a dark woollen shawl, through the meshes of which it could breathe perfectly well, was a live child.

Repton had moved the shawl, on seeing something move underneath, just far enough back to disclose the tiny face of a healthy-looking infant, some fifteen to eighteen months old, who, just waking from sleep, was staring up at the strangers with its face puckered in readiness for a good cry.

Repton was the first to ascertain this fact, and his increased consternation took a murderous form.

“Let’s chuck it overboard!” cried he, with ferocity.

“Give it to the stewardess,” suggested Southerley, more humanely.

Bayre, meanwhile, with presence of mind amounting to genius, had dashed forward, and seizing an indiarubber tube attached to a boat-shaped bottle containing some opaque fluid which lay beside the child, had thrust it into the infant’s mouth and thereby checked the utterance of its very first scream.

His friends looked at him in admiration, but the little group of passengers and ship’s hands who had been attracted by the commotion looked with more derision than sympathy upon the heroic fellow as he made further investigations into this alarming article of luggage.

“It’s not a peasant’s child,” he said, when he had noted the quality of the baby’s clothes.

He had an idea in his head which he found it hard to get rid of. His uncle had a child, and that child had been kidnapped from the mother when she ran away from her husband, and had been left to the tender care of the Vazons. As far as he could judge, his uncle’s child would be of about the same age as the infant in the basket. Could it be that this small pink and white thing which had been so mysteriously planted upon them was his own first cousin? And was it by some device of Miss Eden’s, who mistrusted the Vazons, that the infant had been thus entrusted to the care of himself and his companions?

While the chatter and the chaff went on round about him, Bayre debated thus within himself, carefully examining the face of the now placid and contented infant with a scrutinising care which sent a ripple of more or less subdued laughter round the group.

“Look here, you fellows, this child has not been dumped down here by accident,” said he, with a gravity which, instead of subduing them into attention, sent them into fits of renewed laughter. “I’m pretty sure we shall find upon it some intimation as to what we have got to do with it.”

“I recommend,” said Southerley, “that we put it in the captain’s care to take back with him to Guernsey.”

“That’s it,” said Repton. “And in the meantime we’ll just find out who it is that has played us this trick. That girl who brought it on board must certainly have been known either to the captain or to some of the crew, and can easily be found by them.”

It was remarkable, however, that, even as he made this suggestion, the curious group that had gathered round began to melt away; and Bayre was not surprised to find, upon inquiry, that nobody on board knew anything about the peasant girl, but that all who had seen her professed to have supposed that she was bringing some luggage belonging to one of the passengers in the ordinary way.

To consternation, to amusement, there succeeded indignation in the minds of both Repton and Southerley at the trick which had been played upon them. They had been made the laughing-stock of everybody on board, and they could find no one to help them out of the mess.

Both captain and stewardess flatly refused to undertake the responsibility of taking the child back to Guernsey, and the faces of two out of the three young men grew long at the prospect before them.

“We can’t take the brat back to London with us,” wailed Repton. “It’s you, Bayre, with your confounded philanderings about the island by yourself, who must have brought upon us the reputation of being philanthropists and foundling hospitals, and homes for lost or starving children! And so I vote it’s you who must leave it at the left luggage office at Weymouth. And if you won’t do that, why, Southerley and I must leave _you_ there, that’s all.”

“First,” persisted Bayre, still haunted by his idea, “let us see if there isn’t a letter or direction of any kind packed in with the child.”

“Well, fire away,” said Repton, gloomily. “Here goes.”

And as he spoke he pulled the brown woollen shawl right off the basket with a violent wrench.

As he did so the wind and the violent action together caused a letter, which had been placed in the basket under the shawl, to flutter over the side of the vessel into the sea.

“There you are! What did I tell you?” cried Bayre, excitedly, making a wild grab in the direction of the missive that would have made all clear to them.

To the fresh consternation caused by this mishap there succeeded a wild desire to stop the boat and to secure the precious letter. But the captain would not listen to Repton’s loud expostulations on this subject, and the young man was driven half frantic between his own despair and the reproaches for his hasty action which his two companions did not hesitate to pour upon him.

In the meantime Southerley, partly out of bravado and partly out of real curiosity, had taken his turn at examining the child, and finally announced, with a great show of learning, that he knew from the shape of its headgear that it was a boy.

In his own mind, Bayre, who chose to keep his suspicions to himself, found this confirmation of his idea that the helpless creature who had been so unexpectedly entrusted to them was the heir to his uncle’s property. For he knew that his uncle’s child was a boy. At all hazards, then, the mite must be kept under his eye until he could find out what was the object of entrusting it to him and his companions in this mysterious manner. Once arrived in London he would write to Miss Eden and beg her to enlighten him upon the point.

If it was not the young girl herself who had contrived to send the infant in this manner to some place of greater safety than the cottage of the Vazons, she would at least be able to find out who had done so. As for the fact that she had given him no intimation of the strange commission, Bayre could not be surprised at it. For it was the sort of charge that a man might well have refused if he had known of it beforehand. So he reasoned with himself, and remembered at the same time that Miss Eden had spoken of some commission with which she thought of entrusting them.

In the meantime the child, having disposed of the opaque fluid in the bottle, struggled to sit up, and then to get on its feet and survey the new and rather astonishing world in which it found itself.

Surveying it with the calm scientific curiosity with which a young animal in the Zoo would have inspired him, Southerley drew the attention of his companions to this fact, and even made some solemn and ill-received attempts to conciliate the monster by duckings of the head and twiddlings of the fingers, at which the child stared with grave eyes.

“It’s not very intelligent,” said Southerley, becoming suddenly haughty when he perceived that his antics were creating more amusement among the grown-up persons on board than they did in the object of his playfulness.

“Come, give it a chance,” said Repton, whose first burst of indignation had already given place to something like active interest in the live animal which it seemed so impossible to get rid of. “Were _you_ intelligent at eighteen months old?”

And recalling some of the ways by which comparative peace had been secured among the juvenile inhabitants of the nursery in which he had been one of a body of brothers and sisters, Repton began to show off his accomplishments in that direction by the production of his watch, with which he kept the enemy at bay for some minutes.

“He’s not a bad sort of youngster, as youngsters go,” he remarked apologetically, when both Bayre and Southerley began to smile at him in their turn. “But it’s jolly cold for him up here. I vote we take him down below and lend him to the stewardess while we decide what’s to be done with him.”

But when they had carried him downstairs, an operation during which they were objects of general interest, they found it such a fascinating occupation to chat with the stewardess and to play with the child at the same time, that the minutes flew quickly by, and they were half-way across to the mainland before they woke to the fact that they were as far as ever from a conclusion as to what was to be done with their new and unwelcome possession.

By this time they had grown less barbarous in their intentions, so that Bayre’s quiet announcement that he meant to take the child on to London, and to make inquiries from there as to its identity, met with but faint remonstrances.

“It’s rum sort of luggage to bring back with one from abroad,” protested Repton, with comparative meekness.

“An equivocal sort of possession, a baby!” suggested Southerley.

“It’s all right among three of us,” said Bayre, stoutly. “In numbers there is safety. Let us all show an equal amount of interest in him and we are safe from the breath of calumny. Nobody ever heard of a child with three fathers!”

“I don’t know how to show interest in a child of such tender years,” objected Southerley. “I’m ready to teach him Greek, but the question is whether he would be equally ready to learn.”

“There I have the advantage of you,” said Repton. “Painting, my profession, comes by nature. I’ve only got to put a brush in his hand and a canvas in front of him and he’ll go for it right away.”

“And the tragic part of the business is that his productions will be quite as much sought after as his master’s,” remarked Southerley.

“What is to be your share in his education, Bayre?” asked the artist, ignoring the feeble sneer.

“Manners, I think,” said Bayre, thoughtfully. “Manners and the use of the globes. Now any child who can whirl round a globe in its frame knows as much about the use of it as anybody.”

“And now supposing we have some luncheon and drink the young man’s health,” suggested the convivial Repton.

The suggestion being well received, they left the baby, who was getting sleepy and rather fractious, in charge of the stewardess, and adjourned to the saloon, where, their spirits rising under the influence of cold beef and bottled Bass, they drank the health of the youth of whom they had so strangely become the responsible guardians, and fell in with Bayre’s suggestion that they should throw themselves upon the mercy of Mrs Inkersole, their London landlady, and get her to recommend them to some woman whom they could trust to look after the child.

“And meanwhile you, Bayre, solemnly undertake to find out who the actual possessor is, and to dispose of the infant to the lawful owner.”

Bayre expressed his belief that he was equal to this task, and the matter was settled.

But the three temporary fathers soon found that a railway journey in charge of a lively young man of eighteen months is not an unmixed joy.

A sort of terror had seized upon the whole party long before London was reached; and when they found themselves in the cab, with the child now happily asleep in his basket cradle in one corner, a solemn silence, broken only by hushed whispers of dismal import, fell upon them all as they reflected upon the coming interview with Mrs Inkersole and the result it might have upon their long-standing tenancy.

“If she turns us out,” growled Repton under his breath, tremulously anxious not to wake the slumbering terror, “we shall have to wander about the streets singing for our bread with the child in a basket on a barrow in front of us. For certain am I that no self-respecting landlady would ever take in as fresh lodgers three young men and a miraculous baby!”

“It’s all your fault, Bayre,” said Southerley, sombrely. “I’m certain we could have found some better way out of the mess than this but for your infernal obstinacy.”

Bayre said nothing in particular. He was only too thankful to have got his own way, being, as he was, still in the belief that Miss Eden had wished him to take charge of the child, his uncle’s son as he believed him to be, and to deliver him into the hands of some safer guardian. Here was a fine excuse for communicating with her, and he meant to avail himself of it that very night.

When they reached the house in the street off Tottenham Court Road they found their difficulties begin at the very door. A determined attempt which Southerley and Repton were making to smuggle in the infant in its basket unremarked was foiled by a shrill squeal from under the brown woollen shawl as they reached the door-mat.

Susan, Mrs Inkersole’s most trusted lieutenant, uttered a gasp of amazement.

“Why, sir, what have you got there?” said she to Repton, who began to laugh idiotically, but without replying.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” said Southerley, testily, as he tried to rush the defences and to attain the staircase.

But Susan was firm.

“Is it a dog, sir?” she asked, seizing one end of the shawl and holding tight, while Repton looked at her fiercely, and Southerley showed an ominous disposition to drop his end of the basket and to run for it.

“Good gracious, no! What should we want a dog for?” said Repton, irritably.

“Because,” went on Susan, with firmness, “Mrs Inkersole can’t abide dogs--”

“But I tell you it isn’t a dog,” roared Repton, infuriated by the renewed squeals, unmistakable in their origin, which by this time came from the basket. While at the same moment a well-developed pink leg, which had kicked itself free of shoe and sock, was suddenly protruded from the wraps with which it had been covered, leaving no possible doubt as to the species of the animal underneath.

“Is that a dog, do you think?” asked Repton, with desperate calmness, pointing to the assertive limb.

Susan uttered a faint scream.

“Whatever do you gentlemen want with a baby?” she asked feebly.

“We don’t want anything with it,” replied the artist, fiercely. “We want to get rid of it, that’s what we want. And if you know any person idiotic enough to wish to possess a healthy human infant, of the male sex and with perfectly-developed lungs, why, give him or her our address, and tell him or her to apply early--”

“Hush!” broke in Susan in a frightened whisper.

And as she spoke she glanced towards the second door on the right, which was being softly opened and held ajar, as if some person behind it were listening to the conversation.

“What’s the matter?” asked Repton, leaving Southerley to take the basket and its living contents up the stairs, with the help of Bayre, who had now followed the others into the house after settling with the cabman.

“Oh, there’s a new lady in the dining-rooms--a student,” replied Susan in a low voice. “And perhaps she wouldn’t like it if she knew there’d be a child in the house crying half the day. But surely, sir, you don’t mean to keep it there, do you?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Repton, helplessly. “The little wretch was plumped down into the middle of our luggage when we came away this morning, and Mr Bayre thought it best to bring it on with us and to try to find out who it belongs to from here. But it’s a mad business. Here comes Mrs Inkersole. Oh, shut her up! Tell her anything, anything!”

And unable to stand a strict examination on the part of the landlady with neither of his friends to back him up, Repton flew up the stairs and straight into his room on the second floor.

But in the front room the unfortunate infant was making its presence known by a succession of screams so piercing that all three young men became possessed with a dreadful fear that it would shriek itself into a premature grave, and that they would conjointly be held responsible for its death in convulsions.

In vain they all three tried to soothe it. In vain Repton, seizing the milk-jug, which had been placed upon the table with the tea-things, tried to pour some of the milk into the child’s mouth, a proceeding in which he nearly succeeded in choking him. In vain Southerley dangled his watch before the boy’s eyes till he almost threw the works out of gear. In vain Bayre, the most anxious and miserable of the three, took the child in his arms and tossed it in the air with many frantic attempts to soothe and please it.

Still the unhappy and frightened babe screamed on, and was rapidly growing apopletic in his distress when they were all startled by a knock at the door.

“Oh, come in!” cried Bayre, foreseeing a terrible interview with the landlady which would bring their misfortunes to a climax.

But it was not Mrs Inkersole who entered. Looking shyly round her, bowing to the three young men with a downcast and blushing face, there entered, quietly dressed in black, a woman, a beautiful young woman, tall, broad-shouldered, with fluffy fair hair and the face of an overgrown baby, just the placid-looking, womanly, slow-moving creature whom Bayre had pictured as his ideal.