For a few weeks, things went smoothly enough. Not a jar occurred in the feeble harmony, not a questionable cloud appeared above the horizon. The home-weather seemed to have grown settled. Lady Ann was not unfriendly. Richard, having provided himself with tools for the purpose, bound her prayer-book in violet velvet, with her arms cut out in gold on the cover; and she had not seemed altogether ungrateful. Arthur showed no active hostility, made indeed some little fight with himself to behave as a brother ought to a brother he would rather not have found. Far from inseparable, they were yet to be seen together about the place. Vixen had not once made a face to his face; I will not say she had made none at his back. Theodora and he were fast friends. Miss Malliver, now a sort of upper slave to lady Ann, cringed to him.
Arthur readily sold him Miss Brown, and every day she carried him to Barbara. But he took the advice of Wingfold, and was not long from home any day, but much at hand to his father's call, who had many things for him to do, and was rejoiced to find him, unlike Arthur, both able and ready. He would even send him where a domestic might have done as well; but Richard went with hearty good will. It gladdened him to be of service to the old man. Then a rumour reached his father's ears, carried to lady Ann by her elderly maid, that Richard had been seen in low company; and he was not long in suspecting the truth of the matter.
Not once before since Richard's return, had sir Wilton given the Mansons a thought, never doubting his son's residence at Oxford must have cured him of a merely accidental inclination to such low company, and made evident to him that recognition of such relationship as his to them was an unheard-of impropriety, a sin against social order, a class-treachery.
Almost every day Richard went to Wylder Hall, he had a few minutes with Alice at the parsonage. Neither Barbara nor her lawless, great-hearted mother, would have been pleased to have it otherwise. Barbara treated Alice as a sister, and so did Helen Wingfold, who held that such service as hers must be recompensed with love, and the money thrown in. Their kindness, with her new peace of heart, and plenty of food and fresh air, had made her strong and almost beautiful.
It was Richard's custom to ride over in the morning, but one day it was more convenient for him to go in the evening, and that same evening it happened that Arthur Manson had gone to see his sister. When Richard, on his way back from the Hall, found him at the parsonage, he proposed to see him home: Miss Brown was a good walker, and if Arthur did not choose to ride all the way, they would ride and walk alternately. Arthur was delighted, and they set out in the dusk on foot, Alice going a little way with them. Richard led Miss Brown, and Alice clung joyously to his arm: but for Richard, she would not have known that human being ever was or could be so happy! The western sky was a smoky red; the stars were coming out; the wind was mild, and seemed to fill her soul with life from the fountain of life, from God himself. For Alice had been learning from Barbara—not to think things, but to feel realities, the reality of real things—to see truths themselves. Often, when Mrs. Wingfold could spare her, Barbara would take her out for a walk. Then sometimes as they walked she would quite forget her presence, and through that very forgetting, Alice learned much. When first she saw Barbara lost in silent joy, and could see nothing to make her look glad, she wondered a moment, then swiftly concluded she must be thinking of God. When she saw her spread out her arms as if to embrace the wind that flowed to meet them, then too she wondered, but presently began to feel what a thing the wind was—how full of something strange and sweet. She began to learn that nothing is dead, that there cannot be a physical abstraction, that nothing exists for the sake of the laws of its phenomena. She did not put it so to herself, I need hardly say; but she was, in a word, learning to feel that the world was alive. Of the three she was the merriest that night as they went together along the quiet road. A little way out of the village, Richard set her on the mare, and walked by her side, leading Miss Brown. Such was the tolerably sufficient foundation for the report that he was seen rollicking with a common-looking lad and a servant girl on the high road, in the immediate vicinity of Wylder Hall.
“He is his father's son!” reflected lady Ann.
“He's a chip of the old block!” said sir Wilton to himself. But he did not approve of the openness of the thing. To let such doings be seen was low! Presently fell an ugly light on the affair.
“By Jove!” he said to himself, “it's the damned Manson girl! I'll lay my life on it! The fellow is too much of a puritan to flaunt his own foibles in the public eye; but, damn him, he don't love his father enough not to flaunt his! Dead and buried, the rascal hauls them out of their graves for men to see! It's all the damned socialism of his mother's relations! Otherwise the fellow would be all a father could wish! I might have known it! The Armour blood was sure to break out! What business has he with what his father did before he was born! He was nowhere then, the insolent dog! He shall do as I tell him or go about his business—go and herd with the Mansons and all the rest of them if he likes, and be hanged to them!”
He sat in smouldering rage for a while, and then again his thoughts took shape in words, though not in speech.
“How those fools of Wylders will squirm when I cut the rascal off with a shilling, and settle the property on the man the little lady refused! But Dick will never be such a fool! He cannot reconcile his puritanism with such brazen-faced conduct! I shall never make a gentleman of him! He will revert to the original type! It had disappeared in his mother! What's bred in the damned bone will never out of the damned flesh!”
Richard was at the moment walking with Mr. Wingfold in the rectory garden. They were speaking of what the Lord meant when he said a man must leave all for him. As soon us he entered his father's room, he saw that something had gone wrong with him.
“What is it, father?” he said.
“Richard, sit down,” said sir Wilton. “I must have a word with you:—What young man and woman were you walking with two nights ago, not far from Wylder Hall?”
“My brother and sister, sir—the Mansons.”
“My God, I thought as much!” cried the baronet, and started to his feet—but sat down again: the fetter of his gout pulled him back. “Hold up your right hand,” he went on—sir Wilton was a magistrate—“and swear by God that you will never more in your life speak one word to either of those—persons, or leave my house at once.”
“Father,” said Richard, his voice trembling a little, “I cannot obey you. To deny my friends and relations, even at your command, would be to forsake my Master. It would be to break the bonds that bind men, God's children, together.”
“Hold your cursed jargon! Bonds indeed! Is there no bond between you and your father!”
“Believe me, father, I am very sorry, but I cannot help it. I dare not obey you. You have been very kind to me, and I thank you from my heart,—”
“Shut up, you young hypocrite! you have tongue enough for three!—Come, I will give you one chance more! Drop those persons you call your brother and sister, or I drop you.”
“You must drop me, then, father!” said Richard with a sigh.
“Will you do as I tell you?”
“No, sir. I dare not.”
“Then leave the house.”
Richard rose.
“Good-bye, sir,” he said.
“Get out of the house.”
“May I not take my tools, sir?”
“What tools, damn you!”
“I got some to bind lady Ann's prayer-book.”
“She's taken him in! By Jove, she's done him, the fool! She's been keeping him up to it, to enrage me and get rid of him!” said the baronet to himself.
“What do you want them for?” he asked, a little calmer.
“To work at my trade. If you turn me out, I must go back to that.”
“Damn your soul! it never was, and never will be anything but a tradesman's! Damnmysoul, if I wouldn't rather make young Manson my heir than you!—No, by Jove, you shallnothave your damned tools! Leave the house. You cannot claim a chair-leg in it!”
Richard bowed, and went; got his hat and stick; and walked from the house with about thirty shillings in his pocket. His heart was like a lump of lead, but he was nowise dismayed. He was in no perplexity how to live. Happy the man who knows his hands the gift of God, the providers for his body! I would in especial that teachers of righteousness were able, with St. Paul, to live by their hands! Outside the lodge-gate he paused, and stood in the middle of the road thinking. Thus far he had seen his way, but no farther. To which hand must he turn? Should he go to his grandfather, or to Barbara?
He set out, plodding across the fields, for Wylder Hall. There was no Miss Brown for him now. Miss Wylder, they told him, was in the garden. She sat in a summer-house, reading a story. When she heard his step, she knew, from the very sound of it, that he was discomposed. Never was such a creature for interpreting the signs of the unseen! Her senses were as discriminating as those of wild animals that have not only to find life but to avoid death by the keenness of their wits. She came out, and met him in the dim green air under a wide-spreading yew.
“What is the matter, Richard?” she said, looking in his face with anxiety. “What has gone wrong?”
“My father has turned me out.”
“Turned you out?”
“Yes. I must swear never to speak another word to Alice or Arthur, or go about my business. I went.”
“Of course you did!” cried Barbara, lifting her dainty chin an inch higher.
Then, after a little pause, in which she looked with loving pride straight into his eyes—for was he not a man after her own brave big heart!—she resumed:
“Well, it is no worse for you than before, and ever so much better for me!—What are you going to do, Richard?—There are so many things you could turn to now!”
“Yes, but only one I can do well. I might get fellows to coach, but I should have to wait too long—and then I should have to teach what I thought worth neither the time nor the pay. I prefer to live by my hands, and earn leisure for something else.”
“I like that,” said Barbara. “Will it take you long to get into the way of your old work?”
“I don't think it will,” answered Richard; “and I believe I shall do better at it now. I was looking at some of it yesterday morning, and was surprised I should have been pleased with it. In myself growing, I have grown to demand better work—better both in idea and execution.”
“It is horrid to have you go,” said Barbara; “but I will think you up to God every day, and dream about you every night, and read about you every book. I will write to you, and you will write to me—and—and”—she was on the point of crying, but would not—“and then the old smell of the leather and the paste will be so nice!”
She broke into a merry laugh, and the crisis was over. They walked together to the smithy. Fierce was the wrath of the blacksmith. But for the presence of Barbara, he would have called his son-in-law ugly names. His anger soon subsided, however, and he laughed at himself for spending indignation on such a man.
“I might have known him by this time!” he said. “—But just let him come near the smithy!” he resumed, and his eyes began to flame again. “He shall know, if he does, what a blacksmith thinks of a baronet!—What are you going to do, my son?”
“Go back to my work.”
“Never to that old-wife-trade?” cried the blacksmith. “Look here, Richard!” he said, and bared his upper arm, “there's what the anvil does!” Then he bent his shoulders, and began to wheeze. “And there's what the bookbinding does!” he continued. “No, no; you turn in with me, and we'll show them a sight!—a gentleman that can make his living with his own hands! The country shall see sir Wilton Lestrange's heir a blacksmith because he wouldn't be a snob and deny his own flesh and blood!—'I saw your son to-day, sir Wilton—at the anvil with his grandfather! What a fine fellow he do be! Lord, how he do make the sparks fly!'—If I had him, the old sinner, he should see sparks that came from somewhere else than the anvil!—You turn in with me, Richard, and do work fit for a man!”
“Grandfather,” answered Richard, “I couldn't do your work so well as my own.”
“Yes, you could. In six weeks you'll be a better smith than ever you'd be a bookbinder. There's no good or bad in that sort of soft thing! I'll make you a better blacksmith than myself. There! I can't say fairer!”
“But don't you think it better not to irritate my father more than I must? I oughtn't to torment him. As long as I was here he would fancy me braving him. When I am out of sight, he may think of me again and want to see me—as Job said his maker would.”
“I don't remember,” said Barbara. “Tell me.”
“He says to God—I was reading it the other day—'I wish you would hide me in the grave till you've done being angry with me! Then you would want to see again the creature you had made; you would call me, and I would answer!' God's not like that, of course, but my father might be. There is more chance of his getting over it, if I don't trouble him with sight or sound of me.”
“Well, perhaps you're right!” said Simon. “Off with you to your woman's work! and God bless you!”
Richard took Barbara home, and the same night started for London. Barbara prayed him to take what money she had, but he said that by going in the third class he would have something over, and, once there, would begin to earn money immediately.
His aunt was almost beside herself for lack of outlet to her surprise and delight at seeing him. When she heard his story, however, it was plain she took part with his father, though she was too glad to have her boy again to say so. His uncle too was sincerely glad. His work had not been the same thing to him since Richard went; and to have him again was what he had never hoped. He could not help a grudge that Richard should lose his position for the sake of such as the Mansons, but he saw now the principle involved. He saw too that, in virtue of his belief in God as the father of all, his nephew had much the stronger sense of the claim of man upon man.
Richard never disputed with his uncle; he but suggested, and kept suggesting—in the firm belief that an honest mind must, sooner or later, open its doors to every truth. He settled to his work as if he had never been away from it, and in a fortnight or so could work faster and better than before. Soon he had as much in his peculiar department as he was able to do, for almost all his old employers again sought him. His story being now no secret, they wondered he should return to his trade, but no one thought he had chosen to be a workman because he was not a gentleman.
But how changed was the world to him since the time that looked so far away! With how much larger a life in his heart would he now sit in the orchestra while the gracious forms of music filled the hall, and he seemed to see them soaring on the pinions of the birds of God, as Dante calls the angels, or sweeping level in dance divine, like the six-winged serpents of Isaiah's vision high and lifted up—all the interspaces filled with glow-worms and little spangled snakes of coruscating sound! He was more blessed now than even when but to lift his eyes was to see the face of Barbara; she was in his faith and hope now as well as in his love. He had the loveliest of letters from her. She insisted he should not write oftener than once for her twice: his time was worth more, she said, than twice hers. Mr. Wingfold wrote occasionally, and Richard always answered within a week.
As soon as his son was gone, sir Wilton began to miss him. He wished, first, that the obstinacy of the rascal had not made it necessary to give him quite so sharp a lesson; he wished, next, that he had given him time to see the reasonableness of his demand; and at length, as the days and weeks passed, and not a whisper of prayer entered the ears of the family-Baal, he began to wish that he had not sent him away. The desire to see him grew a longing; his need of him became imperative. Arthur, who now tried a little to do the work he had before declined, was the poorest substitute for Richard; and his father kept thinking how differently Richard had served him. He repented at last as much as was possible to him, and wished he had left the rascal to take his own way. He tried to understand how it was that, anxious always to please him, he yet would not in such a trifle, and that with nothing to gain and everything to lose by his obstinacy. There might be conscience in it! his mother certainly had a conscience! But how could the fool make the Mansons a matter ofhisconscience? They were no business of his!
He pretended to himself that he had been born without a conscience. At the same time he knew very well there were pigeon-holes in his memory he preferred not searching in; knew very well he had done things which were wrong, things he knew to be wrong when he did them. If he had ever done a thing because he ought to do it; if he had ever abstained from doing a thing because he ought not to do it, he would haveknownhe had a conscience. Because he did not obey his conscience, he would rather believe himself without one. I doubt if consciousness ever exists without conscience, however poorly either may be developed.
Fur the first time in his life he was possessed with a good longing—namely, for his son; a fulcrum was at length established which might support leverage for his uplifting. He grew visibly greyer, stooped more, and became very irritable. Twenty times a day he would be on the point of sending for Richard, but twenty times a day his pride checked him.
“If the rascal would make but apology enough to satisfy a Frenchman, I would take him back!” he would say to himself over and over; “but he's such a chip of the old block!—so damned independent!—Well, I don't call it a great fault! If I had had a trade, I should have been just as independent of my father! No, I want no apology from him! Let him just say, 'Mayn't I come back, father?' and the gold ring and the wedding garment shall be out for him directly!”
A month after Richard's expulsion, the baronet drove to the smithy, and accused Simon of causing all the mischief. He must send the boy Manson away, he said: he would settle an annuity on the beggar. That done, Richard must make a suitable apology, and he would take him back. Simon listened without a word. He wanted to see how far he would go.
“If you will not oblige me,” he ended, “you shall not have another stroke of work from Mortgrange, and I will use my influence to drive you from the county.”
Without waiting for an answer, he turned to walk from the shop. But he did not walk. The moment he turned, Simon took him by the shoulders and ran him right out of the smithy up to his carriage, into which, for the footman had made haste to open the door, he would have tumbled him neck and heels, but that, gout and all, sir Wilton managed to spring on the step, and get in without falling. In a rage by no means unnatural, he called to the coachman to send his lash about the ruffian's ears. Simon burst into a guffaw, which so startled the horses that the footman had to run to their heads. In his haste to do so, he failed to shut the door properly; it opened and banged, swinging this way and that, as the horses now reared, now backed, now pulled, and the baronet, cursing and swearing, was tossed about in his carriage like a dried-up kernel in a nut. Simon at length, with tears of merriment running down his red cheeks, managed, in a succession of gymnastics, to close the door.
“Home, Peterkin?” he shouted, and turning away, strode back to his forge, whence immediately sprang upon the air the merriest tune ever played by anvil and hammer with a horse-shoe between them—the sparks flying about the musician like a nimbus of embodied notes. It seemed to soothe the horses, for they started immediately without further racket. Before the next month was over, the baronet was again in the smithy—in a better mood this time. He made no reference to his former ignominious dismissal—wanted only to know if Simon had heard from his grandson. The old man answered that he had: he was well, happy, and busy. Sir Wilton gave a grunt.
“Why didn't he stay and help you?”
“I begged him to do so,” answered Simon, “for he is almost as good at the anvil, and quite as good at the shoring as myself; but he said it would annoy his father to have him so near, and he wouldn't do it.”
His boy's good will made the baronet fidget and swear to hide his compunction. But his evil angel got the upper hand.
“The rascal knew,” he cried, “that nothing would annoy me so much as have him go back to his mire like the washed sow!”
Perceiving Simon look dangerous, he turned with a hasty good-morning, and made for his carriage, casting more than one uneasy glance over his shoulder. But the blacksmith let him depart in peace.
It was about a year after Richard's return to his trade, when one morning the doctor at Barset was roused by a groom, his horse all speckled with foam, who, as soon as he had given his message, galloped to the post-office, and telegraphed for a well-known London physician. A little later, Richard received a telegram: “Father paralyzed. Will meet first train. Wingfold.”
With sad heart he obeyed the summons, and found Wingfold at the station.
“I have just come from the house,” he said. “He is still insensible. They tell me he came to himself once, just a little, and murmuredRichard, but has not spoken since.”
“Let us go to him!” said Richard.
“I fear they will try to prevent you from seeing him.”
“They shall not find it easy.”
“I have a trap outside.”
“Come along.”
They reached Mortgrange, and stopped at the lodge. Richard walked up to the door.
“How is my father?” he asked.
“Much the same, sir, I believe.”
“Is it true that he wanted to see me?”
“I don't know, sir.”
“Is he in his own room?”
“Yes, sir; but, I beg your pardon, sir,” said the man, “I have my lady's orders to admit no one!”
While he spoke, Richard passed him, and went straight to his father's room, which was on the ground-floor. He opened the door softly, and entered. His father lay on the bed, with the Barset surgeon and the London doctor standing over him. The latter looked round, saw him, and came to him.
“I gave orders that no one should be admitted,” he said, in a low stern tone.
“I understand my father wished to see me!” answered Richard.
“He cannot see you.”
“He may come to himself any moment!”
“He will never come to himself,” returned the doctor.
“Then why keep me out?” said Richard.
The eyes of the dying man opened, and Richard received his last look. Sir Wilton gave one sigh, and death was past. Whether life was come, God only, and those who watched on the other side, knew. Lady Ann came in.
“The good baronet is gone!” said the physician.
She turned away. Her eyes glided over Richard as if she had never before seen him. He went up to the bed, and she walked from the room. When Richard came out, he found Wingfold where he had left him, and got into the pony-carriage beside him. The parson drove off.
“His tale is told,” said Richard, in a choking voice. “He did not speak, and I cannot tell whether he knew me, but I had his last look, and that is something. I would have been a good son to him if he had let me—at least I would have tried to be.”
He sat silent, thinking what he might have done for him. Perhaps he would not have died if he had been with him, he thought.
“It is best,” said Wingfold. “We cannot say anything would be best, but we must say everything is best.”
“I think I understand you,” said Richard. “But oh how I would have loved him if he would have let me!”
“And how you will love him!” said Wingfold, “for he will love you. They are getting him ready to let you now. I think he is loving you in the darkness. He had begun to love you long before he went. But he was the slave of the nature he had enfeebled and corrupted. I hope endlessly for him—though God only knows how long it may take, even after the change is begun, to bring men like him back to their true selves.—But surely, Richard,” he cried, bethinking himself, and pulling up his ponies, “your right place is at Mortgrange—at least so long as what is left of your father is lying in the house!”
“Yes, no doubt I and I did think whether I ought not to assert myself, and remain until my father's will was read; but I concluded it better to avoid the possibility of anything unpleasant. I cannot of course yield my right to be chief mourner. I think my father would not wish me to do so.”
“I am sure he would not.—Then, till the funeral, you will stay with us!” concluded the parson, as he drove on.
“No, I thank you,” answered Richard: “I must be at my grandfather's. I will go there when I have seen Barbara.”
On the day of the funeral, no one disputed Richard's right to the place he took, and when it was over, he joined the company assembled to hear the late baronet's will. It was dated ten years before, and gave the two estates of Mortgrange and Cinqmer to his son, Arthur Lestrange There was in it no allusion to the possible existence of a son by his first wife. Richard rose. The lawyer rose also.
“I am sorry, sir Richard,” he said, “that we can find no later will. There ought to have been some provision for the support of the title.”
“My father died suddenly,” answered Richard, “and did not know of my existence until about five years ago.”
“All I can say is, I am very sorry.”
“Do not let it trouble you,” returned Richard. “It matters little to me; I am independent.”
“I am very glad to hear it. I had imagined it otherwise.”
“A man with a good trade and a good education must be independent!”
“Ah, I understand!—But your brother will, as a matter of course—. I shall talk to him about it. The estate is quite equal to it.”
“The estate shall not be burdened with me,” said Richard with a smile. “I am the only one of the family able to do as he pleases.”
“But the title, sir Richard!”
“The title must look after itself. If I thought it in the smallest degree dependent on money for its dignity, I would throw it in the dirt. If it means anything, it means more than money, and can stand without it. If it be an honour, please God, I shall keep it honourable. Whether I shall set it over my shop, remains to be considered.—Good morning!”
As he left the room, a servant met him with the message that lady Ann wished to see him in the library. Cold as ever, but not colder than always, she poked her long white hand at him.
“This is awkward for you, Richard,” she said, “but more awkward still for Arthur. Mortgrange is at your service until you find some employment befitting your position. You must not forget what is due to the family. It is a great pity you offended your father.” Richard was silent.
“He left it therefore in my hands to do as I thought fit. Sir Wilton did not die the rich man people imagined him, but I am ready to place a thousand pounds at your disposal.”
“I should be sorry to make the little he has left you so much less,” answered Richard.
“As you please,” returned her ladyship.
“I should like to have just a word with my sister Theodora,” said Richard.
“I doubt if she will see you.—Miss Malliver, will you take Mr. Tuke to the schoolroom, and then inquire whether Miss Lestrange is able to leave her room. You will stay with her; she is far from well.—Perhaps you had better go and inquire first. Mr. Tuke will wait you here.”
Miss Malliver came from somewhere, and left the room.
Richard felt very angry: was he not to see his father's daughter except in the presence of that woman? But he said nothing.
“There is just one thing,” resumed her ladyship, “upon which, if only out of respect to the feelings of my late husband, I feel bound to insist;—it is, that, while in this neighbourhood, you will be careful as to what company you show yourself in. You will not, I trust, pretend ignorance of my meaning, and cause me the pain of having to be more explicit!”
Richard was struck dumb with indignation—and remained dumb from the feeling that he could not condescend to answer her as she deserved. Ere he had half recovered himself, she had again resumed.
“If the title were ceded to the property,” she said, as if talking to herself, “it might be a matter for more material consideration.”
“Did your ladyship address me?” said Richard.
“If you choose to understand what I mean.—But I speak with too much delicacy, I fear. Compensation it could be only by courtesy.—Suppose I referred to the court of chancery my grave doubts of your story?”
“My father has acknowledged me!”
“And repudiated;—sent you from the house—left you to pursue your trade—bequeathed you nothing! Everybody knows your father—my late husband, I mean—would risk anything for my annoyance, though, thank God, he dared not attempt to push injury beyond the grave!—he well knew the danger of that! Had he really believed you his son, do you imagine he would have left you penniless? Would he not have been rejoiced to put you over Mr. Lestrange's head, if only to wring the heart of his mother?”
“The proofs that satisfied him remain.”
“The testimony, that is, of those most interested in the result—whose very case is a confession of felony!”
“A confession, if you will, that my own aunt was the nurse that carried me away—of which there are proofs.”
“Has any one seen those proofs?”
“My father has seen them, lady Ann.”
“You mean sir Wilton?”
“I do. He accepted them.”
“Has he left any document to that effect?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Who presented those proofs, as you call them?”
“I told sir Wilton where they had been hidden, and together we found them.”
“Where?”
“In the room that was the nursery.”
“Which you occupied for months while working at your trade in the house, and for weeks again before sir Wilton dismissed you!”
“Yes,” answered Richard, who saw very well what she was driving at, but would not seem to understand before she had fully disclosed her intent.
“And where you had opportunity to place what you chose at your leisure!—Excuse me; I am only laying before you what counsel would lay before the court.”
“You wish me to understand, I suppose, that you regard me as an impostor, and believe I put the things, for support of my aunt's evidence, where my father and I found them!”
“I do not say so. I merely endeavour to make you see how the court would regard the affair—how much appearances would be against you. At the same time, I confess I have all along had grave doubts of the story. You, of course, may have been deceived as well as your father—I mean the late baronet, my husband; but in any case, I will not admit you to be what you call yourself, until you are declared such by the law of the land. I will, however, make a proposal to you—and no ungenerous one:—Pledge yourself to make no defence, if, for form's sake, legal proceedings should be judged desirable, and in lieu of the possible baronetcy—for I admit the bare possibility of the case, if tried, being given against us—I will pay you five thousand pounds. It would cost us less to try the case, no doubt, but the thing would at best be disagreeable.—Understand I do not speak without advice!”
“Plainly you do not!” assented Richard. “But,” he continued, “let me place one thing before your ladyship: To do as you ask me, would be to indorse your charge against my father, that he acknowledged me, that is, he lied, to give you annoyance! That is enough. But I have the same objection in respect of my uncle and aunt, of whom you propose to make liars and conspirators!”
He turned to the door.
“You will consider it?” said her ladyship in her stateliest yet softest tone.
“I will. I shall continue to consider it the worst insult you could have offered my father, your late husband. Thank God, he was my mother's husband first!”
“What am I to understand by that?”
“Whatever your ladyship chooses, except that I will not hold any farther communication with you on the matter.”
“Then you mean to dispute the title?”
“I decline to say what I mean or do not mean to do.”
Lady Ann rose to ring the bell.
Miss Malliver met Richard in the doorway. He turned.
“I am going to bid Theodora good-bye,” he said.
“You shall do no such thing!” cried her ladyship.
Richard flew up the stair, and, believing Miss Malliver had not gone to his sister, went straight to her room.
The moment Theodora saw him, she sprang from the bed where she had lain weeping, and threw herself into his arms. He was the only one who had ever made her feel what a man might be to a woman! He told her he had come to bid her good-bye. She looked wild.
“But you're not goingreally—for altogether?” she said.
“My dear sister, what else can I do? Nobody here wants me!”
“Indeed, Richard,Ido!”
“I know you do—and the time will come when you shall have me; but you would not have me live where I am not loved!”
“Richard!” she cried, with a burst of indignation, the first, I fancy, she had ever felt, or at least given way to, “you are the only gentleman in the family!”
Richard laughed, and Theodora dried her eyes. Miss Malliver was near enough to be able to report, and the poor girl had a bad time of it in consequence.
“I will not trouble Arthur,” said Richard. “Say good-bye to him for me, and give him my love. Please tell him that, although all I had was my father's yet, as between him and me, Miss Brown is mine, and I expect him to send her to Wylder Hall. Good-bye again to my dear sister! I leave a bit of my heart in the house, where I know it will not be trampled on!”
Theodora could not speak. Her only answer was another embrace, and they parted.
Richard went to see Barbara, and found her at the parsonage.
“What an opportunity you have,” said Wingfold, “of maintaining before the world the honour of work! The man who makes a thing exist that did not exist, or who sets anything right that had gone wrong, must be more worthy than he who only consumes what exists, or helps things to remain wrong!”
“But,” suggested Barbara, with her usual keenness, “are you not now encouraging him to seek the praise of men? To seek it for a good thing, is the more contemptible.”
“There is little praise to be got from men for that,” said Wingfold; “and I am sure Richard does not seek any. He would help men to see that the man who serves his neighbour, is the man whom the Lord of the universe honours. An idle man, or one busy only for himself, is like a lump of refuse floating this way and that in the flux and reflux of the sewer-tide of the world. Were Richard lord of lands it would be absurd of him to give his life to bookbinding; that would be to desert his neighbour on those lands; but what better can he do now than follow the trade by which he may at once earn his living? To omit the question of possibility,—suppose he read for the bar, would that bring him closer to humanity? Would it be a diviner mode of life? Is it a more honourable thing to win a cause—perhaps for the wrong man—than to preserve an old and valuable book? Will a man rank higher in the kingdom that shall not end, because he has again and again rendered unrighteousness triumphant? Would Richard's mind be as free in chambers as in the workshop to search into truth, or as keen to suspect its covert? Would he sit closer to the well-springs of thought and aspiration in a barrister's library, than among the books by which he wins his bread?”
With eternity before them, and God at the head and the heart of the universe, Richard and Barbara did not believe in separation any more than in death. He in London and she at Wylder Hall, they were far more together than most unparted pairs.
Wingfold set himself to keep Barbara busy, giving her plenty to read and plenty of work: her waiting should be no loss of time to her if he could help it! Among other things, he set her to teach his boy where she thought herself much too ignorant: he held, not only that to teach is the best way to learn, but that the imperfect are the best teachers of the imperfect. He thought this must be why the Lord seems to regard with so much indifference the many falsehoods uttered of and for him. When a man, he said, agonized to get into other hearts the thing dear to his own, the false intellectual or even moral forms in which his ignorance and the crudity of his understanding compelled him to embody it, would not render its truth of none effect, but might, on the contrary, make its reception possible where a truer presentation would stick fast in the door-way.
He made Richard promise to take no important step for a year without first letting him know. He was anxious he should have nothing to undo because of what the packet committed to his care might contain.