Scarlet Rose

Chapter 36

28th of January 1897

"Oh dear Lord" Prudence sprung up from her seat .

"It'll live." Dr. Gardner exclaimed with a chuckle. After all that effort to save this baby, he too had second thoughts about what he was about to do, the heartache he had to deliver to the mother next door. But he already had promised to find a suitable baby for Mr. and Mrs. Blake.

Dr. Gardner was one of London's most prominent obstetricians. He also was a very greedy man with a God complex. An overfed ego that took pleasure from giving to desperate childless couples the one thing they craved more than anything in the world, and his pockets were more than eager to be lined with their money. For him, it was nothing more than a win-win situation. His ethics were to use a light term, muddled. Taking newborns from poor families who had a lot of mouths already to feed didn't feel to him unethical, nor wrong. He had consent from the families. Didn't matter that given the chance of them being in a better financial situation, they would never have given their children away, but poverty and hunger push humans to exceed limits they never thought they existed.

Nor did it bother him that he kept most of the money for himself, and gave away only what could be considered a mere pittance for him. But that is what he did.

In the secretive world of couples infertility and adoption, Dr. Gardner had acquired a grand reputation. He sought finding children that fitted the expectations of the couples best. Many of them were weary of adopting children from orphanages, not knowing the families these children were coming from. Whether violence or drunkenness run into their blood. Others didn't even want to be known that the baby the mother would hold in her arms was from another woman's womb. Pretend pregnancies were not unusual. Expectant mothers disappearing from the social scene for nine months.

The doctor would source poor single young women who had fallen pregnant by fake promises, or one lustful evening, perhaps one drink too many. There could be a whole array of reasons. All it mattered for him was for the woman to have been healthy in body and mind and the same for the man who wasn't keen to provide the future child with the presence of a father. Other times, the babies would come from working families who had fell into hardship with more mouths to feed than they wished. In all occasions, for the time it took for the baby to come into the world, the mothers would have been taken care of, regarding food and medicines. In the case of families, everyone would have staple food so not to go hungry for nine months.

Taking one of Mrs. Graham's babies was not in his plans. The woman didn't seem poor to offer her money. Not by a long shot. Nor did she look like as if she was hard done by life. She was eloquent, and very well mannered. He had suspected she wasn't British. Despite a carefully staged accent, he could tell a slight American twang as she talked. The Old Vicarage where she spend the last few months of her pregnancy wasn't just any place a couple went to hide from the prying eyes of society. Great poets and writers had stayed in this picturesque cottage that was situated in the village of Grantchester.

"But Grantchester! ah, Grantchester!

There's peace and holy quiet there, Great clouds along pacific skies, and men and women with straight eyes"

Rupert Brooke had said it best in his ode to Grantchester. Dr. Gardner understood that the man who came to ask for his expertise and his time to care and deliver Mrs. Graham's babies represented someone who must had been quite high up the British aristocratic circles, because not only he hadn't seen his face, he didn't even know his name.