The next post brought a letter from Simon Armour, saying, after his own
peculiar fashion, that it was time the thing were properly understood
between the parties concerned; but, that done, they must attend to the
baronet's wish, and disclose nothing yet: he believed sir Wilton had his
reasons. They must therefore, as soon as possible, make it clear to
him that there was no break in the chain of their proof of Richard's
identity. He proposed, therefore, that his daughter should pay her
father a visit, and bring Richard.
The suggestion seemed good to all concerned. Criminal as she knew
herself, Jane Tuke did not shrink from again facing sir Wilton, with the
nephew by her side whom one and twenty years before she had carried in
her arms to meet his unfatherly gaze! To her surprise she found that she
almost enjoyed the idea.
Richard cashed the post-office-order the old man sent them, and they set
out for his cottage.
The same day Simon went to Mortgrange and saw the baronet, who agreed
at once to go to the cottage to meet his sister-in-law. The moment he
entered the little parlour where they waited to receive him, he made
Mrs. Tuke a polite bow, and held out his hand.
“You are the sister of my late wife, I am told,” he said.
Jane made him a dignified courtesy, her resentment, after the lapse of
twenty years, rising fresh at sight of the man who had behaved so badly
to her sister.
“It was you that carried off the child?” said the baronet.
“Yes, sir,” answered Jane.
“I am glad I did not know where to look for him. You did me the greatest
possible favour. What these twenty years would have been like, with him
in the house, I dare not think.”
“It was for the child's sake I did it!” said Jane.
“I am perfectly aware it was not for mine!” returned sir Wilton. “Ha!
ha! you looked as if you had come to stab me that day you brought the
little object to the library, and gave me such a scare! You presented
his fingers and toes to me as if, by Jove, I was the devil, and had
made them so on purpose!--I tell you, Richard, if that's your name, you
rascal, you have as little idea what a preposterously ugly creature you
were, as I had that you would ever grow to be--well, half-fit to look
at! I was appalled at the sight of you! And a good thing it was! If I
had taken to you, and brought you up at home, it would scarcely have
been to your advantage. You would have been worth less than you are,
however little that may be! But it doesn't follow you're the least fit
to be owned to! You're a tradesman, every inch of you--no more like a
gentleman than--well, not half so like a gentleman as your grandfather
there! By heaven, the anvil must be some sort of education! Why wasn't
_I_ bound apprentice to my old friend Simon there! But, Richard, you
don't look a gentleman, though your aunt looks as if she would eat me
for saying it.--Now listen to me--all of you. It's no use your saying
I've acknowledged him. If I choose to say I know nothing about him,
then, as I told the rascal himself the other day, you'll have to prove
your case, and that will take money! and when you've proved it, you get
nothing but the title, and much good that will do you! So you had better
make up all your minds to do as I tell you--that is, not to say one word
about the affair, but just hold your tongues.--Now none of that looking
at one another, as if I meant to do you! I'm not going to have people
say my son shows the tradesman in him! I'm not going to have the
Lestranges knock under to the Armours! I'm going to have the rascal the
gentleman I can make him!--You're to go to college directly, sir; and
I don't want to hear of or from you till you've taken your degree! You
shall have two hundred a year and pay your own fees--not a penny more
if you go on your marrow-bones for it!--You understand? You're not to
attempt communicating with me. If there's anything I ought to know, let
your grandfather come to me. I will see him when he pleases--or go to
him, if he prefers it, and I'm not too gouty! Only, mind, I make no
promises! If I should leave all I have to the other lot, you will
have no right to complain. With the education I will give you, and the
independence your uncle has given you, and the good sense you have on
your own hook, you're provided for. You can be a doctor or a parson, you
know. There's more than one living in my gift. The Reverend sir Richard
Lestrange!--it don't sound amiss. I'm sorry I shan't hear it. I shall
be gone where they crop one of everything--even of his good works,
the parsons say, but I shan't be much the barer for that! It's hard,
confounded hard, though, when they're all a fellow has got!--Now don't
say a word! I don't like being contradicted!--not at all! It sends one
round on the other tack, I tell you--and there's my gout coming! Only
mind this: if once you say who you are as long as you're at college, or
before I give you leave, I have done with you. I won't have any little
plan of mine forestalled for your vanity! Don't any of you say who he
is. It will be better for him--much. If it be but hinted who he is,
he'll be courted and flattered, and then he'll be stuck up, and take
to spending money! But as sure as hell, if he goes beyond his
allowance--well, I'll pay it, but it shall be his last day at Oxford. He
shall go at once into the navy--or the excise, by George!”
This expression of the baronet's will, if not quite to the satisfaction
of every one concerned, was altogether delightful to Richard.
“May I say one word, sir?” he asked.
“Yes, if it's not arguing.”
“I've not read a page of Latin since I left school, and I never knew any
Greek.”
“Oh! ah! I forgot that predicament! You must have a tutor to prepare
you!--but you shall go to Oxford with him. I will _not_ have you loafing
about here! You may remain with your grandfather till I find one, but
you're not to come near Mortgrange.”
“I may go to London with my mother, may I not?” said Richard.
“I see nothing against that. It will be the better way.”
“If you please, sir Wilton,” said Mrs. Tuke, “I left evidence at
Mortgrange of what I should have to say.”
“What sort of evidence?”
“Things that belonged to the child and myself.”
“Where?”
“Hid in the nursery.”
“My lady had everything moved, and the room fresh-papered after you
left. I remember that distinctly.”
“Did she say nothing about finding anything?”
“Nothing.--Of course she wouldn't!”
“I left a box of my own, with--”
“You'll never see it again.”
“The things the child always wore when he went out, were under the
wardrobe.”
“Oblige me by saying nothing about them. I am perfectly satisfied, and
believe every word you say. I believe Richard there the child of your
sister Robina and myself; and it shall not be my fault if he don't have
his rights! At the same time I promise nothing, and will manage things
as I see best.”
“At your pleasure, sir!” answered Mrs. Tuke.
“Should you mind, sir, if I went to see Mr. Wingfold before I go?” asked
Richard.
“Who's he?”
“The clergyman of the next parish, sir.”
“I don't know him--don't want to know him!--What have you got to do with
_him_?”
“He was kind to me when I was down here before.”
“I don't care you should have much to do with the clergy.”
“You said, sir, I might go into the church!”
“_That's_ another thing quite! You would have the thing in your own
hands then!”
Richard was silent. There was no point to argue. The moment sir Wilton
was gone, Simon turned to his grandson.
“It was a pity you asked him about Mr. Wingfold. The only thing is you
mustn't let out his secret. As to seeing Mr. Wingfold, or Miss Wylder
either, just do as you please.”
“No, grandfather. If I had not asked him, perhaps I might; but to ask
him, and then not do what he told me, would be a sneaking shame!”
“You're right, my boy! Hold on that way, and you'll never be ashamed--or
make your people ashamed either.”
For the meantime, then, Richard went to London with his mother; and so
anxious was old Simon, stimulated in part by the faithfulness of his
grandson, to do nothing that might thwart the pleasure of the tyrant,
that when first Wingfold asked after Richard, he told him he was at
home, and the next time that he was at work in the country.
Richard went on helping his uncle, and going often to see his brother
and sister. When Arthur was able for the journey, both he and Alice went
with him. At the station they were met by Simon, with an old post-chaise
he had to mend up. Having seen Arthur comfortably settled, his brother
and sister went back to London together--Alice to go into a single room,
and betake herself once more to her work, but with new courage and hope;
Richard to the book-binding till his father should have found a tutor
for him.
The Tukes were slowly becoming used, if not reconciled, to his care of
the Mansons. His mother, indignant for her deceased sister, stood out
the stiffest; the bookbinder could not fail to see that the youth was
but putting in practice the socialistic theories he had himself sought
to teach him. True, the thing came straight from the heart of Richard,
and went much farther than his uncle's theories; but his uncle counted
it the result of his own training, and woke at last to the fact that his
theories were better than he had himself known.
With the help of the head of the college to which sir Wilton had
resolved to send his son, a tutor was at length found--happily for
Richard, one of the right sort. They went together to Oxford, and set to
work at once. It would be hard to say which of the two reaped the more
pleasure from the relation, or which, in the duplex process of teaching
and learning, gained the most. For the tutor had in Richard a pupil
of practised brain yet fresh, a live soul ready, for its own need and
nourishment, to use every truth it came near. His penetrative habit made
not a few regard him as a bore: their feeble vitality was troubled by
the energy of his; he could not let a thing go in which he descried a
principle: he must see it close! To the more experienced he was one
who had not yet learned, wisely fearful of the trampling hoof, to carry
aside his oyster with its possible pearl before he opened it. In earnest
about everything, he must work out his liberty before he could gambol.
A slave will amuse himself in his dungeon; a free man must file through
his chains and dig through his prison-walls before he can frolic.
Sunlight and air came through his open windows enough to keep Richard
alive and strong, but not enough yet to make him merry. He was too
solemn, thus, for most of those he met, but, happily, not for his tutor.
Finding Richard knew ten times as much of English literature as himself,
he became in this department his pupil's pupil; and listening to his
occasional utterance of a religious difficulty, had new regions of
thought opened in him, to the deepening and verifying of his nature.
The result for the tutor was that he sought ordination, in the hope of
giving to others what had at length become real to himself.
Richard gained little distinction at his examinations. He did well
enough, but was too eager after real knowledge to care about appearing
to know.
He made friends, but not many familiar friends. He sorely missed
ministration: it had grown a necessity of his nature. It was well that
the habit should be broken for a time. For, laden with consciousness,
and not full of God, the soul will delight in itself as a benefactor, a
regnant giver, the centre of thanks and obligation: and will thus, with
a rampart-mound of self-satisfaction, dam out the original creative life
of its being, the recognition of which is life eternal. But it grew upon
Richard that, if there be a God, it is the one business of a man to
find him, and that, if he would find him, he must obey the voice of his
conscience.
As to the outward show of the man, Richard's carriage was improving.
Level intercourse with men of his own age but more at home in what is
called society, influenced his manners both with and without his will,
while, all the time, he was gathering the confidence of experience. His
rowing, and the daily run to and from the boats, with other exercises
prescribed by his tutor, strengthened the shoulders whose early stoop
had threatened to return with much reading. He was fast growing more
than presentable. With the men of his year, his character more than his
faculty had influence.
Old Simon was doing his best for Arthur. He would not hear of his going
back to London, or attempting anything in the way of work beyond a
little in the garden. He was indeed nowise fit for more.
The blacksmith himself was making progress--the best parts of him
were growing fast. Age was turning the strength into channels and
mill-streams, which before, wild-foaming, had flooded the meadows.