The Waif

Summary

In gas-lit fin-de-siècle Paris, a fortune murmurs behind velvet drapery while a child’s heartbeat is bartered for gold. Robert Daubrais—silk-clad, obsidian-eyed—crosses the Channel to claim a dead brother’s riches, only to discover that a posthumous squall named Remi has sliced his inheritance in half. Rage calcifies into conspiracy: he contracts Moretti, a guttersnipe hyena with a bowler tilted like a guillotine blade, to abduct the infant and drop him amid the city’s churning anonymity. Fate, however, prefers operatic reversals; the foundling is salvaged by Barberin, a weather-scarred navvy whose calloused palms cradle destiny as easily as shovels. Eight winters pass—each one folding like a tarnished coin—while Daubrais nurses the bitter knowledge that Arthur, the wan legitimate heir, still clings to breath by a silken thread. One spring noon beside the Seine, Arthur’s frail gaze lands on a riverbank urchin juggling three flame-furred dogs and a tambourine-beating monkey: Remi, now sun-browned, voice cracked by road-dust, heart stitched with songs. A gilded yacht’s gangway lowers; the boys speak; maternal strings are tugged; Vitali, the itinerant impresario who taught Remi to coax sorrow from violin strings, is sprung from bureaucratic shackles. Yet every rescue is a rehearsal for rupture: Vitali’s lungs surrender to frost, Garafoli’s cat-o’-nine-tails whistles through fog, and Daubrais—mask slipping—whispers to Remi that the kidnapper Moretti is his sire, a lie sharp enough to sever filial instinct. Matteo, street-urchin confidant, overhears, and the two boys bolt across rooftops glazed with moonlight until they tumble, breathless, into the drawing-room where Daubrais has just pronounced Remi dead. Candlelight ricochets off chandeliers; a mother’s gasp cleaves the decade; villainy is exiled; the prodigal heartbeat is folded back into the corseted bosom of legitimacy.

Synopsis

Robert Daubrais, while in London, learned that his brother died in Paris. He had expected to inherit the bulk of the estate as the only heir, Arthur, was a sickly child. However, another child, Remi, was born after the father's death and Daubrais was furious. Scheming to get the estate, he hired a gangster, Moretti, to kidnap Remi. The child was left in a park where he was found by Barberin, a laborer, and taken to Chavanon. This fact was told to Daubrais. Eight years passed and Remi's mother gave him up for dead. During this time Remi grew up, believing that Barberin's wife was his own mother. One day Barberin broke his arm and decided that he could no longer support Remi, who overheard his foster parents talking about him. He was shocked to learn that he was not their child. Chancing to meet Vitali, a street-performer, Barberin hired Remi out to him. Soon after Vitali was arrested for not having a license and was sent to jail. Remi, left alone with three dogs and a monkey, was forced to struggle for himself. Daubrais' scheme, however, was frustrated, as Arthur, while never robust, still continued to live. While cruising for his health, Arthur spied Remi and his trick animals on the riverbank and persuaded his mother to take them on board. Remi told his new friends of how old Vitali was arrested and Madam Daubrais succeeded in having him liberated. He rejoined Remi, who regretted leaving his friends. So, for the second time, fate separated mother and child. Misfortune seemed to follow Remi and Vitali, for soon after two of their dogs died and they found it difficult to eke out a bare existence. Believing he could do better alone, Vitali gave Remi into the keeping of Garafoli, a rascally Fagin. Seeing Garafoli flog his other boys, he again took Rami with him. His strength was exhausted, however, and one cold night he passed away, leaving Remi alone once more. Madame Daubrais often requested her brother-in-law to try to locate the little boy whom Arthur wished to see again. But Daubrais willed otherwise. He succeeded in finding Remi and told him that Moretti, the kidnapper, was his father. Remi had to keep with a little street gamin named Matteo, who overheard Daubrais tell Moretti who Remi's real parents were. This he told to Remi and the little chums decided to run away. Daubrais told Remi's mother that the boy she sought was dead. But just then Remi and his little friend arrival. Great was her surprise and delight to learn that Remi was her long-mourned child. Daubrais, now unmasked, was driven in anger from her sight. Safe again in her arms after many years of trials and tribulations, Remi vowed that he would never again be separated from his mother. And Madam Dubrais breathed a fervent amen.