There were no marks on the child by which he might be identified.
On the child's clothes, before giving him up, the mother pinned a paper, giving his Christian name—Humphrey.
He was the son of Anthony Woodroffe. In the Woodroffe family there was always a Humphrey.
Nothing else, nothing else—no clue, no suggestion, or hint, or opening anywhere, except resemblance. The strange likeness of this young man Humphrey to himself haunted Dick; he looked at himself in the glass. Any one could see that his features, his hair, his eyes, were those of Humphrey. Differences there were—in stature, in expression, in carriage. Dick was as elastic and springy as the other was measured and slow of gait. As for that other resemblance, said by Alice to be even more marked—that between Humphrey and Anthony Woodroffe, the actor, John Anthony—it was even more remarkable. These resemblances one may look for in sons and in brothers, but not in cousins separated by five hundred years. Another point which he kept to himself was the resemblance which he found in Humphrey to Alice, his mother by theory. It was not the same kind of resemblance as the other—features, face, head, all were different; it was that resemblance which reminds—a resemblance not defined in words, but unmistakable. And all day long and all night Dick saw this resemblance.
He put down the points—
- 1. The strongest possible resemblance—so stated by the mother of the adopted child—of son to father.
- 2. A strong resemblance as between brothers or sons of the same father.
- 3. A resemblance—was it fancy of his own?—as between mother and son.
- 4. The lady who adopted the boy must have belonged to an Indian family, because there was an ayah with her.
- 5. The age of the child adopted corresponded very nearly with the age of Sir Humphrey.
He went to the British Museum and consulted "Debrett." He took the trouble to go there because he did not possess the volume, and none of his friends had ever heard of it. There he read, as the doctor had read a few weeks before, that the present holder of the Woodroffe baronetcy was Humphrey Arundale, second baronet, son of the late Sir Humphrey, etc., born on December the 2nd, 1872.
There was nothing much to be got out of that little paragraph. But, as Dick read it again and again, the letters began to shift themselves. It is astonishing how letters can, by a little shifting, convey a very different meaning. This is what he read now—
"Woodroffe, Humphrey, falsely calling himself second baronet, and son of the late Sir Humphrey, really son of one John Anthony Woodroffe, distant cousin of Sir Humphrey, vocalist, comedian, and vagabond, by Alice, daughter of Tom, Dick, or Harry Pennefather, engaged in small trade, of Hackney; born in 1873, sold by his mother in February, 1874, through the agency of Sir Robert Steele, M.D., F.R.S., Ex-President of the Royal College of Physicians, now of Harley Street, to Lilias, Lady Woodroffe, daughter of the Earl of Dunedin, who passed him off as her own child.
"Collateral branches—Richard, son of the late John Anthony Woodroffe, by Bethia, his second wife, after he had divorced and deserted the above mentioned Alice, October 14, 1875; unmarried, has no club, musician, singer, comedian, vagabond."