It was the middle of the day before they were missed. Their absence
caused for a time no commotion; the servants said nurse must have taken
the child for his usual walk. But when the nurse from London came,
and, after renewed search and inquiry, nothing was heard of them, their
disappearance could no longer be kept from lady Ann. She sent to inform
her husband.
Sir Wilton asked a question or two of her messenger, said the thing must
be seen to, finished his cigar, threw the stump in the fire, and went to
his wife; when at once they began to discuss, not the steps to be taken
for the recovery of the child, but the woman's motive for stealing him.
The lady insisted it was revenge for having been turned away, and that
she would, as soon as she reached a suitable place, put an end to his
life: she had seen murder in her eyes! The father opined there was
no such danger: he remembered, though he did not mention it, the
peculiarity of the woman's behaviour when first he saw her. There was
no limit, he said, to the unnatural fancies of women; some were
disgustingly fond of children, even other women's children. Plain as the
infant was, he did not doubt she had taken a fancy to him, and therefore
declined to part with him. The element of revenge might, he allowed,
have a share in the deed; but that would be satisfied with leaving them
in doubt of his fate. For his part, he made her welcome to him! To this
lady Ann gave no answer: she was not easily shocked, and could, without
consternation, have regarded his disappearance as final. But something
must at least appear to be done! Unpleasant things might be said, and
uncertainty was full of annoyance!
“You must be careful, sir Wilton,” she remarked. “Nobody thinks you
believe the child your own.”
Sir Wilton laughed.
“I never had a doubt on the subject. I wish I had: he's not to my
credit. If we never hear of him again, the better for the next!”
“That is true!” rejoined lady Ann. “But what if, after we had forgotten
all about him, he were to turn up again?”
“That would be unpleasant--and is indeed a reason why we should look
for him. Better find him than live in doubt! Besides, the world would be
uncharitable enough to hint that you had made away with him: it's what
ought to have been done when first he appeared. I give you my word,
Ann, he was a positive monster! The object was actually
web-footed!--web-footed like any frog!”
“You must let the police know,” said the lady.
“That the child is web-footed? No, I think not!” yawned sir Wilton.
He got up, went out, and ordered a groom to ride hard to the village--as
hard as he could go--and let the police understand what had occurred.
Within the hour a constable appeared, come to inquire when last the
fugitives were seen, and what they wore--the answer to which latter
question set the police looking for persons very different in appearance
from Jane and her nursling. Nothing was heard of them, and the inquiry,
never prosecuted with any vigour, was by degrees dropped entirely.
John Tuke had grumbled greatly at his wife's desertion of him for
grandees who would never thank her; but he gave in to the prolongation
of her absence with a better grace, when he learned how the motherless
baby was regarded by his own people. The humanity of the man rose in
defence of the injured. He felt also that, in espousing the cause of his
wife's nephew, scorned by his baronet father, he was taking the part
of his own down-trodden class. He was greatly perplexed, however, as to
what end the thing was to have. Must he live without his wife till the
boy was sent to school?
He was in bed and fast asleep, when suddenly opening his eyes, he saw
beside him the wife he had not seen for twelve months, with the stolen
child in her arms. When he heard how the stepmother had treated her, and
how the babe was likely to fare among its gentle kin, he was filled with
fresh indignation; but, while thoroughly appreciating and approving his
wife's decision and energy, he saw to what the deed exposed them, and
augured frightful consequences to the discovery that seemed almost
certain. But when he understood the precautions she had taken, and
bethought himself how often the police fail, he had better hopes of
escape. One thing he never dreamed of--and that was, restoring the
child. Often at night he would lie wondering how far, in case of their
being tried for kidnapping, the defence would reach, that his wife was
the child's aunt; and whether the fact that she was none the less a poor
woman standing up against the rich, would not render that or any plea
unavailing. Jane was, and long remained, serenely hopeful.
When she left for Mortgrange, they had agreed that her husband should
say she was gone to her father's; and as nobody where they lived knew
who or where her father was, nobody had the end of any clue. For some
time after her return she did not show herself, leaving it to her
husband to say she had come back with her baby. Then she began to appear
with the child, and so managed her references to her absence, that no
one dreamed of his not being her own, or imagined that she had left
her husband for other reason than to be tended at her old home in her
confinement. After a few years, even the fact of his not having been
born in that house was forgotten; and Richard Lestrange grew up as the
son of John Tuke, the bookbinder. Not in any mind was there a doubt as
to his parentage.
They lived on the very bank of the Thames, in a poor part of a populous,
busy, thriving suburb, far from fashionable, yet not without inhabitants
of refinement. Had not art and literature sent out a few suckers into
it, there would have been no place in it for John Tuke. For, more than
liking his trade, being indeed fond of it, he would not work for the
booksellers, but used his talent to the satisfaction of known customers,
of whom he had now not a few, for his reputation had spread beyond the
near neighbourhood. But while he worked cheaper, quality considered,
than many binders, even carefully superintending that most important yet
most neglected part of the handicraft, the sewing, he never undertook
cheap work. Never, indeed, without persuasion on the part of his
employer and expostulation on his own, did he consent to _half-bind_
a book. Hence it comes to be confessed, that, when _carte blanche_ was
given him, he would not infrequently expend upon a book an amount of
labour and a value of material quite out of proportion to the importance
of the book. Still, being a thoroughly conscientious workman, who never
hurried the forwarding, never cut from a margin a hair's breadth more
than was necessary, and hated finger-marks on the whiteness of a page,
he was well known as such, and had plenty of work--had often, indeed, to
refuse what was offered him, hence was able to decline all such jobs as
would give him no pleasure, and grew more fastidious as he grew older
in regard to the quality of the work he would undertake. He had never
employed a journeyman, and would never take more than two apprentices at
a time.
As Richard Lestrange grew, his chief pleasure was to be in the shop with
his uncle, and watch him at his varying work. I think his knowledge of
books as things led him the sooner to desire them as realities, for to
read he learned with avidity. When he was old enough to go to school,
his adopted father spared nothing he could spend to make him fit for
his future; wisely resolved, however, that he should know nothing of his
rights until he was of an age to understand them--except, indeed, sir
Wilton should die before that age arrived, when his cause would be too
much prejudiced by farther postponement of claim. Heartily they hoped
that their secret might remain a secret until their nephew should be
capable of protecting them from any untoward consequence of their well
intended crime.
Happily there was in the place, and near enough for the boy to attend it
easily, a good day-school upon an old foundation, whose fees were within
his father's means. Richard proved a fair student and became a great
reader. But he took such an intelligent and practical interest in the
work he saw going on at home, that he began, while yet a mere child, to
use paste and paper of his own accord. First he made manuscript-books
for his work at school, and for the copying of such verses as he took
a fancy to in his reading. Then inside the covers of some of these he
would make pockets for papers; and so advanced to small portfolios and
pocket-books, of which he would make presents to his companions, and
sometimes, when more ambitiously successful, to a master. In their
construction he used bits of coloured paper and scraps of leather,
chiefly morocco, which his father willingly made over to him, watching
his progress with an interest quite paternal, and showing a workman's
wisdom in this, that only when he saw him in a real difficulty would he
come to his aid--as, for instance, when first he struggled with a piece
of leather too thick for the bonds of paste, and must be taught how to
pare it to the necessary flexibility and compliance.
To become able to _make_ something is, I think, necessary to thorough
development. I would rather have son of mine a carpenter, a watchmaker,
a wood-carver, a shoemaker, a jeweller, a blacksmith, a bookbinder,
than I would have him earn his bread as a clerk in a counting-house.
Not merely is the cultivation of operant faculty a better education in
faculty, but it brings the man nearer to every thing operant; humanity
unfolds itself to him the readier; its ways and thoughts and modes of
being grow the clearer to both intellect and heart. The poetry of
life, the inner side of that nature which comes from him who, on the
Sabbath-days even, “worketh hitherto,” rises nearer the surface to
meet the eyes of the man who _makes._ What advantage the carpenter of
Nazareth gathered from his bench, is the inheritance of every workman,
in proportion as he does divine, that is, honest work.
Perceiving the faculty of the boy, his father--so let us call John Tuke
for the present--naturally thought it well to make him a gift of his
trade: it would always be a possession! “Whatever turn things may take,”
he would remark to his wife, “the boy will have his bread in his hands.
And say what they will, the man who can gather his food off his own
bench, or screw it out of his own press, must be a freer man than he who
but for his inheritance would have to beg, steal, or die of hunger. And
who knows how long the world may permit idlers to fare of its best!”
For, after a fashion of his own, Tuke was a philosopher and a
politician. But his politics were those of the philosopher, not of the
politician.
Richard, with his great love of reading, and therefore of books, was
delighted to learn the craft which is their attendant and servitor. When
too young yet to wield the hammer without danger both to himself and the
book under it, he began to sew, and in a few weeks was able to bring
the sheets together entirely to the satisfaction of his father. From the
first he set him to do that essential part of the work in the best way,
that is, to sew every sheet round every cord: it is only when one can
perfectly work after the perfect rule, that he may be trusted with
variations and exceptions.
He went on teaching him until the boy could, he confessed, do almost
everything better than himself--went on until he had taught him every
delicacy, every secret of the craft. Richard developed a positive genius
for the work, seeming almost to learn it by intuition. A pocket-book,
with which he presented his father on his fiftieth birthday, brought out
his unqualified praise.
In the process he gradually revealed a predilection for a rarer use of
his faculty--a use more nice, while less distinguished, and not much
favoured by his father. It had its prime source deeper than the art
of book-binding--in the love of books themselves, not as leaves to be
bound, but as utterances to be heard. Certain dealers in old books
have loved some of them so as to refuse to part with them on any
terms; Richard, unable to possess more than a very few, manifested
his veneration for them in another and nearer fashion, running, as was
natural and healthy, in the lines of his calling.
For many months in diligent attendance at certain of the evening-classes
at King's College, he had developed a true insight into and sympathy
with what is best in our literature--chiefly in that of the sixteenth
century: from this grew an almost peculiar regard for old books. With
three or four shillings weekly at his disposal, he laid himself out to
discover and buy such volumes as, in themselves of value, were in so bad
a condition as to be of little worth from the mere bookseller's point
of view: with these for his first patients he opened a hospital, or
angel-asylum, for the lodging, restorative treatment, and systematic
invigoration of decayed volumes. Love and power combined made him look
on the dilapidated, slow-wasting abodes of human thought and delight
with a healing compassion--almost with a passion of healing. The worse
gnawed of the tooth of insect-time, the farther down any choice book in
the steep decline of years, the more intent was Richard on having
it. More and more skillful he grew, not only in rebinding such whose
clothing was past repair, but in restoring the tone of their very
constitution; and in so mending the ancient and beggarly garments of
others that they reassumed a venerable respectability. Through love,
he passed from an artisan to an artist. His reverence for the inner
reality, the book itself, in itself beyond time and decay, had roused
in him a child-like regard for its body, for its broken inclosure and
default of manifestation. He would espy the beauty of an old binding
through any amount of abrasion and laceration. To his eyes almost any
old binding was better for its book than any new one.
His father came to regard with wonder and admiration the redeeming
faculty of his son, whereby he would reinstate in strength and ripe
dignity a volume which he would have taken to pieces, and redressed like
an age-worn woman in a fashionable gown. So far did his son's superior
taste work upon his, that at length, if he opened a new binding, however
sombre, and saw a time-browned paper and old type within, the sight
would give him the shock of a discord.
But Tuke was in many things no other than a man of this world, and
sorely he doubted if such labour would ever have its counterpoise in
money. It paid better, because it was much easier, to reclothe than to
restore! to destroy and replace than to renew! When he had watched many
times for minutes together his son's delicate manipulation--in which he
patched without pauperizing, and subaided without humiliating--and at
last contemplating the finished result, he concluded him possessed of
a quite original faculty for book-healing.--“But alas,” he thought,
“genius seldom gets beyond board-wages!” It did not occur to him
that genius least requires more than board-wages. He encouraged him,
nevertheless, though mildly, in the pursuit of this neglected branch of
the binding-art.
As the days went on, and their love for their nephew grew with his
deserts, the uncle and aunt shrank more and more from the thought, which
every year compelled them to think the oftener, that the day was drawing
nigh when they must volunteer the confession that he was not their
child.
When he was about seventeen, Richard settled down to work with his
father, occasionally assisting him, but in general occupied with his
own special branch, in which Tuke, through his long connection with
book-lovers possessing small cherished libraries, was able to bring him
almost as many jobs as he could undertake. The fact that a volume could
be so repaired, stimulated the purchase of shabby books; and part of
what was saved on the price of a good copy was laid out on the amendment
of the poor one. But however much the youth delighted in it, he could
not but find the work fidgety and tiring; whence ensued the advantage
that he left it the oftener for a ramble, or a solitary hour on the
river. He had but few companions, his guardians, wisely or not, being
more fastidious about his associates than if he had been their very son.
His uncle, of strong socialistic opinions, and wont to dilate on human
equality--as if the thing that ought to be, and must one day come, could
be furthered by the assertion of its present existence--was, like the
holders of even higher theories, not a little apt to forget the practice
necessarily involved: this son of a baronet, seeing that he was the
son also of his wife's sister, was not to be brought up like one of the
many!
Ugliness in infancy is a promise, though perhaps a doubtful one, of
beauty in manhood; and in Richard's case the promise was fulfilled:
hardly a hint was left of the baby-face which had repelled his father.
He was now a handsome well-grown youth, with dark-brown hair, dark-green
eyes, broad shoulders, and a little stoop which made his aunt uneasy:
she would have had him join a volunteer corps, but he declared he had
not the time. He accepted her encouragement, however, to forsake his
work as often as he felt inclined. He had good health; what was better,
a good temper; and what was better still, a willing heart toward his
neighbour. A certain over-hanging of his brows was--especially when he
contracted them, as, in perplexity or endeavour, he not infrequently
did--called a scowl by such as did not love him; but it was of shallow
insignificance, and probably the trick of some ancestor.
Before long, his thinking began to take form in verse-making. It matters
little to my narrative whether he produced anything of original value or
not; utterance aids growth, which is the prime necessity of human as
of all other life. Not seldom, bent over his work, he would be evolving
some musical fashion of words--with no relaxation, however, of the sharp
attention and delicate handling required by the nature of that work. It
is the privilege of some kinds of labour, that they are compatible with
thoughts of higher things. At the book-keeper's desk, the clerk must
think of nothing but his work; he is chained to it as the galley-slave
to his oar; the shoemaker may be poet or mystic, or both; the ploughman
may turn a good furrow and a good verse together; Richard could at once
use hands and thoughts. It troubled his protectors that they could not
send him to college, but they comforted themselves that it would not be
too late when he returned to his natural position in society. They
had no plan in their minds, no date settled at which to initiate his
restoration. All they had determined was, that he must at least be a
grown man, capable of looking after his own affairs, when the first step
for it was taken.
John Tuke was one of those who acknowledge in some measure the claims of
their neighbour, but assert ignorance of any one who must be worshipped.
And in truth, the God presented to him by his teachers was one with
little claim on human devotion. The religious system brought to bear on
his youth had operated but feebly on his conscience, and not at all
on his affections. It had, however, so wrought upon his apprehensions,
that, when afterward persuaded there was no ground for agonizing
anticipation, he welcomed the conviction as in itself a redemption for
all men; “for, surely,” he argued, “fear is the worst of evils!” The
very approach of such a relief predisposed him to receive whatever
teaching might follow from the same source; and soon he believed
himself satisfied that the notion of religion--of duty toward an unseen
maker--was but an old-wives'-fable; and that, as to the hereafter, a
mere cessation of consciousness was the only reasonable expectation. The
testimony of his senses, although negative, he accepted as stronger
on that side than any amount of what could, he said, be but the purest
assertion on the other. Why should he heed an old book? why one more
than another? The world was around him: some things he must believe;
other things no man could! One thing was clear: every man was bound to
give his neighbour fair-play! He would press nothing upon Richard as to
God or no God! he would not be dogmatic! he only wanted to make a man
of him! And was he not so far successful? argued John. Was not Richard
growing up a diligent, honest fellow, loving books, and leading a good
life; whereas, had he been left to his father, he could not have escaped
being arrogant and unjust, despising the poor of his own flesh, and
caring only to please himself! In the midst of such superior causes
of satisfaction, it also pleased Tuke to reflect that the trade he had
taught his nephew was a clean one, which, while it rendered him superior
to any shrewd trick fortune might play him, would not make his hands
unlike those of a gentleman.
His aunt, however, kept wishing that Richard were better “set up,” and
looked more like his grandfather the blacksmith, whose trade she could
not help regarding as manlier than that of her husband. Hence she
had long cherished the desire that he should spend some time with her
father. But John would not hear of it. He would get working at the
forge, he said, and ruin his hands for the delicate art in which he was
now unapproachable.
For in certain less socialistic moods, John would insist on regarding
bookbinding, in all and any of its branches, not as a trade, but an art.