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

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 going really -for altogether?" she said.

"My dear sister, what else can I do? Nobody here wants me!"

"Indeed, Richard, I do!"

"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.


CHAPTER LXV.


THE PACKET .

The day so often in Wingfold's thought, arrived at last-the anniversary of the death of sir Wilton. He rose early, his mind anxious, and his heart troubled that his mind should be anxious, and set out for London by the first train. Arrived; he sought at once the office of sir