Every fresh face that came into the room filled the nurse with terror.
The servants still continued to pay their compliments to the baby in the same form as usual, crying:
"How like it is to its father!"
Nor did Sir Edward himself perceive the difference, his lady"s illness probably engrossing all his attention at the time, though, indeed, gentlemen seldom take much notice of very young children.
When Lady Harriet began to recover, and the nurse saw me in her arms caressed as her own child, all fears of detection were over; but the pangs of remorse then seized her. As the dear sick lady hung with tears of fondness over me, she thought she should have died with sorrow for having so cruelly deceived her.
When I was a year old, Mrs. Withers was discharged, and because she had been observed to nurse me with uncommon care and affection, and was seen to shed many tears at parting from me, to reward her fidelity Sir Edward settled a small pension on her, and she was allowed to come every Sunday to dine in the housekeeper"s room, and see her little lady.
When she went home, it might have been expected she would have neglected the child she had so wickedly stolen, instead of which she nursed it with the greatest tenderness, being very sorry for what she had done.
All the ease she could ever find for her troubled conscience was in her extreme care of this injured child, and in the weekly visits to its father"s house she constantly brought it with her. At the time I have the earliest recollection of her she was become a widow, and with the pension Sir Edward allowed her, and some plain work she did for our family, she maintained herself and her supposed daughter. The doting fondness she showed for her child was much talked of. It was said she waited upon it more like a servant than a mother, and it was observed its clothes were always made, as far as her slender means would permit, in the same fashion, and her hair cut and curled in the same form, as mine. To this person, as having been my faithful nurse, and to her child, I was always taught to show particular civility, and the little girl was always brought into the nursery to play with me. Ann was a little delicate thing, and remarkably well behaved, for, though so much indulged in every other respect, my mother was very attentive to her manners.
As the child grew older my mother became very uneasy about her education. She was so very desirous of having her well behaved that she feared to send her to school, lest she should learn ill manners among the village children, with whom she never suffered her to play, and she was such a poor scholar herself that she could teach her little or nothing. I heard her relate this her distress to my own maid, with tears in her eyes, and I formed a resolution to beg of my parents that I might have Ann for a companion, and that she might be allowed to take lessons with me of my governess.
My birthday was then approaching, and on that day I was always indulged in the privilege of asking some peculiar favour.
"And what boon has my annual pet.i.tioner to beg to-day?" said my father, as he entered the breakfast-room on the morning of my birthday.
Then I told him of the great anxiety expressed by Nurse Withers concerning her daughter; how much she wished it was in her power to give her an education that would enable her to get her living without hard labour. I set the good qualities of Ann Withers in the best light I could, and in conclusion I begged she might be permitted to partake with me in education, and become my companion.
"This is a very serious request indeed, Harriet," said Sir Edward. "Your mother and I must consult together on the subject."
The result of this conversation was favourable to my wishes. In a few weeks my foster-sister was taken into the house, and placed under the tuition of my governess.
To me, who had hitherto lived without any companions of my own age, except occasional visitors, the idea of a play-fellow constantly to a.s.sociate with was very pleasant, and, after the first shyness of feeling her altered situation was over, Ann seemed as much at her ease as if she had always been brought up in our house. I became very fond of her, and took pleasure in showing her all manner of attentions, which so far won on her affections that she told me she had a secret entrusted to her by her mother, which she had promised never to reveal as long as her mother lived, but that she almost wished to confide it to me, because I was such a kind friend to her; yet, having promised never to tell it till the death of her mother, she was afraid to tell it to me. At first I a.s.sured her that I would never press her to the disclosure, for that promises of secrecy were to be held sacred; but whenever we fell into any confidential kind of conversation, this secret seemed always ready to come out. Whether she or I were most to blame, I know not, though I own I could not help giving frequently hints how well I could keep a secret. At length she told me what I have before related--namely, that she was in truth the daughter of Sir Edward and Lady Lesley, and I the child of her supposed mother.
When I was first in possession of this wonderful secret, my heart burned to reveal it. I thought how praiseworthy it would be in me to restore to my friend the rights of her birth; yet I thought only of becoming her patroness, and raising her to her proper rank. It never occurred to me that my own degradation must necessarily follow. I endeavoured to persuade her to let me tell this important affair to my parents. This she positively refused. I expressed wonder that she should so faithfully keep this secret for an unworthy woman, who in her infancy had done her such an injury.
"Oh," said she, "you do not know how much she loves me, or you would not wonder that I never resent that. I have seen her grieve and be so very sorry on my account that I would not bring her into more trouble for any good that could happen to myself. She has often told me that, since the day she changed us, she has never known what it is to have a happy moment, and when she returned home from nursing you, finding me very thin and sickly, how her heart smote her for what she had done; and then she nursed and fed me with such anxious care that she grew much fonder of me than if I had been her own, and that on the Sundays when she used to bring me here it was more pleasure to her to see me in my father"s own house than it was to her to see you, her real child. The shyness you showed towards her while you were very young, and the forced civility you seemed to affect as you grew older, always appeared like ingrat.i.tude towards her who had done so much for you. My mother has desired me to disclose this after her death, but I do not believe I shall ever mention it then, for I should be sorry to bring any reproach even on her memory."
In a short time after this important discovery, Ann was sent home to pa.s.s a few weeks with her mother, on the occasion of the unexpected arrival of some visitors to our house. They were to bring children with them, and these I was to consider as my own guests.
In the expected arrival of my young visitants, and in making preparations to entertain them, I had little leisure to deliberate on what conduct I should pursue with regard to my friend"s secret.
Something must be done, I thought, to make her amends for the injury she had sustained, and I resolved to consider the matter attentively on her return. Still my mind ran on conferring favours. I never considered myself as transformed into the dependent person. Indeed, Sir Edward at this time set me about a task which occupied the whole of my attention.
He proposed that I should write a little interlude, after the manner of the French "Pet.i.tes Pieces," and to try my ingenuity, no one was to see it before the representation, except the performers, myself, and my little friends, who, as they were all younger than I, could not be expected to lend me much a.s.sistance. I have already told you what a proud girl I was. During the writing of this piece, the receiving of my young friends, and the instructing them in their several parts, I never felt myself of so much importance. With Ann my pride had somewhat slumbered. The difference of our rank left no room for compet.i.tion; all was complacency and good-humour on my part, and affectionate grat.i.tude, tempered with respect, on hers. But here I had full room to show courtesy, to affect those graces, to imitate that elegance of manners, practised by Lady Harriet to their mothers. I was to be their instructress in action and in att.i.tudes, and to receive their praises and their admiration of my theatrical genius. It was a new scene of triumph for me, and I might then be said to be in the very height of my glory.
If the plot of my piece, for the invention of which they so highly praised me, had been indeed my own, all would have been well; but unhappily I borrowed from a source which made my drama end far differently from what I intended it should. In the catastrophe I lost not only the name I personated in the piece, but with it my own name also, and all my rank and consequence in the world fled from me for ever. My father presented me with a beautiful writing-desk for the use of my new authorship. My silver standish was placed upon it; a quire of gilt paper was before me. I took out a parcel of my best crow quills, and down I sate in the greatest form imaginable.
I conjecture I have no talent for invention. Certain it is that, when I sat down to compose my piece, no story would come into my head but the story which Ann had so lately related to me. Many sheets were scrawled over in vain; I could think of nothing else. Still the babies and the nurse were before me in all the minutiae of description Ann had given them. The costly attire of the lady baby, the homely garb of the cottage infant, the affecting address of the fond mother to her own offspring, then the charming _equivoque_ in the change of the children--it all looked so dramatic. It was a play ready-made to my hands. The invalid mother would form the pathetic, the silly exclamations of the servants the ludicrous, and the nurse was nature itself. It is true I had a few scruples that it might, should it come to the knowledge of Ann, be construed into something very like a breach of confidence. But she was at home, and might never happen to hear of the subject of my piece, and if she did, why, it was only making some handsome apology. To a dependent companion to whom I had been so very great a friend, it was not necessary to be so very particular about such a trifle.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "Many sheets were scrawled over in vain. I could think of nothing else."]
Thus I reasoned as I wrote my drama, beginning with the t.i.tle, which I called "The Changeling," and ending with these words: "The curtain drops, while the lady clasps the baby in her arms, and the nurse sighs audibly." I invented no new incident; I simply wrote the story as Ann had told it to me, in the best blank verse I was able to compose.
By the time it was finished the company had arrived. The casting the different parts was my next care. The Honourable Augustus M----, a young gentleman of five years of age, undertook to play the father. He was only to come in and say: "How does my little darling do to-day?" The three Miss ----s were to be the servants; they, too, had only single lines to speak.
As these four were all very young performers, we made them rehea.r.s.e many times over, that they might walk in and out with proper decorum; but the performance was stopped before their entrances and their exits arrived.
I complimented Lady Elizabeth, the sister of Augustus, who was the eldest of the young ladies, with the choice of the lady mother, or the nurse. She fixed on the former. She was to recline on a sofa, and, affecting ill-health, speak some eight or ten lines, which began with, "Oh, that I could my precious baby see!" To their cousin, Miss Emily ----, was given the girl who had the care of the nurse"s child. Two dolls were to personate the two children, and the princ.i.p.al character of the nurse I had the pleasure to perform myself. It consisted of several speeches, and a very long soliloquy during the changing of the children"s clothes.
The elder brother of Augustus, a gentleman of fifteen years of age, refused to mix in our childish drama, yet condescended to paint the scenes, and our dresses were got up by my own maid.
When we thought ourselves quite perfect in our several parts, we announced it for representation. Sir Edward and Lady Harriet, with their visitors, the parents of my young troop of comedians, honoured us with their presence. The servants were also permitted to go into a music-gallery, which was at the end of a ball-room we had chosen for our theatre.
As author and princ.i.p.al performer, standing before a n.o.ble audience, my mind was too much engaged with the arduous task I had undertaken to glance my eyes towards the music-gallery, or I might have seen two more spectators there than I expected. Nurse Withers and her daughter Ann were there; they had been invited by the housekeeper to be present at the representation of Miss Lesley"s play.
In the midst of the performance, as I, in character of the nurse, was delivering the wrong child to the girl, there was an exclamation from the music-gallery of:
"Oh, it"s all true! it"s all true!"
This was followed by a bustle among the servants, and screams as of a person in an hysteric fit. Sir Edward came forward to inquire what was the matter. He saw it was Mrs. Withers who had fallen into a fit. Ann was weeping over her, and crying out:
"Oh, Miss Lesley, you have told all in the play!"
Mrs. Withers was brought out into the ball-room. There, with tears and in broken accents, with every sign of terror and remorse, she soon made a full confession of her so long-concealed guilt.
The strangers a.s.sembled to see our childish mimicry of pa.s.sion were witnesses to a highly-wrought dramatic scene in real life. I intended that they should see the curtain drop without any discovery of the deceit. Unable to invent any new incident, I left the conclusion imperfect as I found it. But they saw a more strict poetical justice done; they saw the rightful child restored to its parents, and the nurse overwhelmed with shame, and threatened with the severest punishment.
"Take this woman," said Sir Edward, "and lock her up till she be delivered into the hands of justice."
Ann, on her knees, implored mercy for her mother. Addressing the children, who were gathered round her, "Dear ladies," said she, "help me--on your knees help me--to beg forgiveness for my mother!" Down the young ones all dropped; even Lady Elizabeth bent on her knee. "Sir Edward, pity her distress! Sir Edward pardon her!"
All joined in the pet.i.tion except one, whose voice ought to have been loudest in the appeal. No word, no accent came from me. I hung over Lady Harriet"s chair, weeping as if my heart would break. But I wept for my own fallen fortunes, not for my mother"s sorrow.
I thought within myself: "If in the integrity of my heart, refusing to partic.i.p.ate in this unjust secret, I had boldly ventured to publish the truth, I might have had some consolation in the praises which so generous an action would have merited; but it is through the vanity of being supposed to have written a pretty story that I have meanly broken my faith with my friend, and unintentionally proclaimed the disgrace of my mother and myself."
While thoughts like these were pa.s.sing through my mind, Ann had obtained my mother"s pardon. Instead of being sent away to confinement and the horrors of a prison, she was given by Sir Edward into the care of the housekeeper, who had orders from Lady Harriet to see her put to bed and properly attended to, for again this wretched woman had fallen into a fit.
Ann would have followed my mother, but Sir Edward brought her back, telling her that she should see her when she was better. He then led her towards Lady Harriet, desiring her to embrace her child. She did so, and I saw her, as I had phrased it in the play, "clasped in her mother"s arms."
This scene had greatly affected the spirits of Lady Harriet. Through the whole of it, it was with difficulty she had been kept from fainting, and she was now led into the drawing-room by the ladies. The gentlemen followed, talking with Sir Edward of the astonishing instance of filial affection they had just seen in the earnest pleadings of the child for her supposed mother.
Ann, too, went with them, and was conducted by her whom I had always considered as my own particular friend. Lady Elizabeth took hold of her hand, and said:
"Miss Lesley, will you permit me to conduct you to the drawing-room?"
I was left weeping behind the chair where Lady Harriet had sate, and, as I thought, quite alone. A something had before twitched my frock two or three times, so slightly I had scarcely noticed it. A little head now peeped round, and looking up in my face, said:
"She is not Miss Lesley!"
It was the young Augustus. He had been sitting at my feet, but I had not observed him. He then started up, and taking hold of my hand with one of his, with the other holding fast by my clothes, he led, or rather dragged, me into the midst of the company a.s.sembled in the drawing-room. The vehemence of his manner, his little face as red as fire, caught every eye. The ladies smiled, and one gentleman laughed in a most unfeeling manner. His elder brother patted him on the head, and said:
"You are a humane little fellow. Elizabeth, we might have thought of this."
Very kind words were now spoken to me by Sir Edward, and he called me Harriet, precious name now grown to me. Lady Harriet kissed me, and said she would never forget how long she had loved me as her child. These were comfortable words, but I heard echoed round the room:
"Poor thing! _she_ cannot help it! I am sure _she_ is to be pitied! Dear Lady Harriet, how kind, how considerate you are!"
Ah! what a deep sense of my altered condition did I then feel!