There & Back by George MacDonald (acx book reading .txt) 📕

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"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! Damn my soul, if I wouldn't rather make young Manson my heir than you!-No, by Jove, you shall not have 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!"


CHAPTER LXIII.


BARONET AND BLACKSMITH .

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