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! 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!”