There & Back

She had been wondering how far, if Richard proved heir to a baronetcy, his education and manners would decree him no gentleman; but it was useless to seek light from lady Ann. As they talked, however, the feeling came and grew upon her, that she was not herself acting like a lady, in going so much to her house, and being received by her as a friend, when all the time she knew something she did not know, something it was important for her to know, something she had a right and a claim to know. She would herself hate to live on what was not her own, as lady Ann would be left to do when sir Wilton died, if the truth about Richard remained undisclosed! It was very unfair to leave them unwarned for this reason besides, that so the fact might at last find them, for lack of preparation, without resource!

“I want to talk to you about something, lady Ann,” she said. “You can’t but know that a son of sir Wilton’s was stolen when he was a baby, and never found!”

It was the first time for many years that lady Ann had heard the thing alluded to except once or twice by her husband. Her heart seemed to make a somersault, but not a visible muscle moved. What could the girl be hinting at? Were there reports about? She must let her talk!—the more freely the better!

“Every one knows that!” she answered. “It is but too true. It happened after my marriage. I was in the house at the time.—What of it, child? There can be little hope of his turning up now—after twenty years!”

“I believe he has turned up. I believe I know him.”

Lady Ann jumped to the most natural, most mistaken conclusion.

“It’s the bookbinder!” she said to herself. “He has been telling her a pack of lies! His being in the house is part of the plot. It must be nipped in the bud! If it be no lie, if he be the very man, it must be nipped all the same! Good heavens! if Arthur should not marry her—or someone—before it is known!”

“It may be so,” she answered quietly, “but it hardly interests me. I don’t like talking of such things to a girl, but innocence cannot always be spared in this wicked world. The child you speak of was born in this house, and stolen out of it; but his mother was a low woman; she was not the wife of sir Wilton.”

“Everybody believed her his wife!” faltered Barbara.

“Very possibly! Very likely! She may even have thought so herself! Such people are so ignorant!” said lady Ann with the utmost coolness. “He may even have married her after the child was born for anything I know.”

“Sir Wilton must have made her believe she was his wife!” cried Barbara, her blood rising at the thought of such a wrong done to Richard’s mother.

“Possibly,” admitted lady Ann with a smile.

“Then a baronet may tell lies, though a gentleman may not!” said Barbara, as if speaking to herself.

Lady Ann was not indignant. She had hesitated to say a lady might lie, but did not hesitate to lie the moment the temptation came, nor for that would doubt herself a lady! She knew perfectly that the woman was the wife of her husband as much as she herself was, and that she died giving birth to the heir. She had no hope that any lie she could tell would keep that child out of the property if he were alive and her husband wished him to have it; but a lie well told to Barbara might help to keep her for Arthur.

“Gentlemen think they may tell lies to women!” she returned with calmness, and just a tinge of regret.

“How are they gentlemen then?” cried Barbara; “or where is the good of being a gentleman? Is it that he knows better how to lie to a woman? A knight used to be every woman’s castle of refuge; a gentleman now, it seems, is a pitfall in the bush!”

“It is a matter they settle among themselves,” answered lady Ann, confused between her desire to appear moral, and to gain her lie credit.

“I think I shall not call myself a lady!” said Barbara, after a moment’s silence. “I prefer being a woman! I wonder whether in heaven they say a woman or a lady!”

“I suppose they are all sorts there as well as here,” answered lady Ann.

“How will the ladies do without gentlemen?” suggested Barbara.

“Why without gentlemen? There will be as many surely of the one sex as of the other!”

“No,” said Barbara, “that cannot be! Gentlemen tell lies, and I am sure no lie is told in heaven!”

“All gentlemen do not tell lies!” returned lady Ann, herself at the moment full of lying.

“But all gentlemen may lie!” persisted Barbara, “so there can be no gentlemen in heaven.”

“I am sorry I had to mention the thing,” returned lady Ann, “but I was afraid your sweet romantic nature might cherish an interest where was nothing on which to ground it. Of course I know whence the report you allude to comes! Any man, bookbinder or blacksmith, may put in a claim. He will find plenty to back him. They will very likely get up a bubble-company, for speculation on his chance! His own class will be sure to take his part! Now that those that ought to know better have taught them to combine, the lower orders stick at nothing to annoy their superiors! But, thank heaven, the estate is not entailed!”

“If you imagine Mr. Tuke told me he was heir to Mortgrange, lady Ann, you are mistaken. He does not know himself that he is even supposed to be.”

“Are you sure of that? Who then told you? Is it likely his friends have got him into the house, under the eye of his pretended father, and he himself know nothing of the manoeuvre?”

“How do you know it was he I meant, lady Ann?”

“You told me so yourself.”

“No; that I did not! I know I didn’t, lady Ann! What made you fix on him?”

Lady Ann saw she had committed herself.

“If you did not tell me,” she rejoined, “your peculiar behaviour to the man must have led me to the conclusion!”

“I have never concealed my interest in Mr. Tuke, but—”

“You certainly have not!” interrupted her ladyship, who both suffered in temper and lost in prudence from annoyance at her own blunder.

“Pray, hear me out, lady Ann. What I want to say is, that my friendship for Mr. Tuke had begun long before I learned the fact concerning which I thought I ought to warn you.”

“Friendship!—ah, well!—scarcely decorous!—but as to what you call fact, I would counsel a little caution. I repeat that, if the man be the son of that woman, which may be difficult to prove, it is of no consequence to any one; sir Wilton was never married to his mother—properly married, I mean. I am sorry he should have been born out of wedlock—it is anything but proper; at the same time I cannot be sorry that he will never come between my Arthur and the succession.”

Here lady Ann saw a sudden radiance light up the face of Barbara, and change its expression, from that of a lady rightfully angry and a little scornful, to that of a child-angel. Entirely concerned hitherto with Richard’s loss and pain, if what lady Ann said should be true, it now first occurred to her what she herself would gain if indeed he was not the heir: no one could think she had been his friend because he was going to be a rich man! If he was the wronged man her ladyship represented him—and her ladyship ought to know—she might behave to him as she pleased without suspicion of low motive! Little she knew what motives such persons as lady Ann were capable of attributing—as little how incapable they were of understanding any generous motive!

Barbara had an insuperable, a divine love of justice. She would have scorned the thought of forsaking a friend because the very mode of his earthly being was an ante-natal wrong to him. The righteousness that makes a man visit the sins of a father upon his children, is the righteousness of a devil, not the righteousness of God. When God visits the sins of a father on his children, it is to deliver the child from his own sins through yielding to inherited temptation. Barbara rejoiced that she was free to approach Richard, and make some amends to him for the ass-judgment of the world. I do not know that she said to herself, “Now I may love him as I please!” but her thought went in that direction.

It did not take lady Ann long to interpret the glow on Barbara’s face to her own satisfaction. The report she had heard and believed, had kept Barbara back from encouraging Arthur, and made her pursue her unpleasant intimacy with the bookbinder! the sudden change on her countenance indicated the relief of finding that Arthur, and not this man, was indeed the heir! How could she but prefer her Arthur to a man smelling of leather and glue, a man without the manners or education of a gentleman! He might know a few things that gentlemen did not care to know, but even those he got only out of books! He could not do one of the many things her Arthur did! He could neither ride, nor shoot, nor dress, nor dance! He was tall, but he was clumsy! No doubt he was a sort of vulgar-handsome, but when out of temper, was ugly enough!

That lady Ann condescended to such comparison, was enough to show that she believed the story at least half. The girl remaining silent.

“You will oblige me, dear Barbara,” she said, “by not alluding to this report! It might raise doubt where it could not do serious harm!”

“There are others who not only know but believe it,” answered Barbara.

“Who are they?”

“I do not feel at liberty to tell their names. I thought you had a right to know what was said, but I have no right to mention where I heard it.”

Lady Ann grew thoughtful again, and as she thought grew convinced that Barbara had not spoken the truth, and that it was Richard who had told her: it is so easy for those who lie to believe that another is lying! It is impossible indeed for such to imagine that another, with what they would count strong reason for lying, would not lie. Gain is the crucial question for vile souls of any rank. She believed also, for they that lie doom themselves to believe lies as well as disbelieve truths, that Richard had got into the house in order to learn things that might serve in the establishing of his claim.

“It will be much better you should keep silent concerning the report,” she said. “I do not want the question stirred. If the young man, any young man, I mean, should claim the heirship, we must meet the thing as it ought to be met; till then, promise me you will be silent.”

She would fain have time to think, for she feared in some way compromising herself. And in any case, the longer the crisis could be postponed, the better for her prospects in the issue!

“I will not promise anything,” answered Barbara. “I dread promising.”

“Why?” asked lady Ann, raising her eyebrows.

“Because promises have to be kept, and that is sometimes very difficult; and because sometimes you find you ought not to have made them, and yet you must keep them. It is a horrid thing to have to keep a promise you don’t like keeping, especially if it hurts anybody.”