There & Back

“I don’t know yet; I should have to choose—thanks to you and my uncle!”

“In the meantime, you must be introduced to your stepmother.”

“Then—excuse me, sir Wilton—” interposed the parson, “do you wish me to regard my old friend Richard as your son and heir?”

“As my son, yes; as my heir—that will depend—”

“On his behaviour, I presume!” Wingfold ventured.

“I say nothing of the sort!” replied the baronet testily. “Would you have me doubt whether he will carry himself like a gentleman? The thing depends on my pleasure. There are others besides him.”

He rose to ring the bell. Richard started up to forestall his intent.

“Now, Richard,” said his father, turning sharp upon him, “don’t be officious. Nothing shows want of breeding more than to do a thing for a man in his own house. It is a cursed liberty!”

“I will try to remember, sir,” answered Richard.

“Do; we shall get on the better.”

He was seized, as by the claw of a crab, with a sharp twinge of the gout. He caught at the back of a chair, hobbled with its help to the table, and so to his seat. Richard restrained himself and stood rigid. The baronet turned a half humorous, half reproachful look on him.

“That’s right!” he said. “Never be officious. I wish my father had taught me as I am teaching you!—Ever had the gout, Mr. Wingfold?”

“Never, sir Wilton.”

“Then you ought every Sunday to say, ‘Thank God that I have no gout!’”

“But if we thanked God for all the ills we don’t have, there would be no time to thank him for any of the blessings we do have!”

“What blessings?”

“So many, I don’t know where to begin to answer you.”

“Ah, yes! you’re a clergyman! I forgot. It’s your business to thank God. For my part, being a layman, I don’t know anything in particular I’ve got to thank him for.”

“If I thought a layman had less to thank God for than a clergyman, I should begin to doubt whether either had anything to thank him for. Why, sir Wilton, I find everything a blessing! I thank God I am a poor man. I thank him for every good book I fall in with. I thank him when a child smiles to me. I thank him when the sun rises or the wind blows on me. Every day I am so happy, or at least so peaceful, or at the worst so hopeful, that my very consciousness is a thanksgiving.”

“Do you thank him for your wife, Mr. Wingfold?”

“Every day of my existence.”

The baronet stared at him a moment, then turned to his son.

“Richard,” he said, “you had better make up your mind to go into the church! You hear Mr. Wingfold! I shouldn’t like it myself; I should have to be at my prayers all day!”

“Ah, sir Wilton, it doesn’t take time to thank God! It only takes eternity.”

Sir Wilton stared. He did not understand.

“Ring the bell, will you!” he said. “The fellow seems to have gone to sleep.”

Richard obeyed, and not a word was spoken until the man appeared.

“Wilkins,” said his master, “go to my lady, and say I beg the favour of her presence in the library for a moment.”

The man went.

“No antipathy to cats, I hope!” he added, turning to Richard.

“None, sir,” answered Richard gravely.

“That’s good! Then you won’t lie taken aback!”

In a few minutes—she seldom made her husband wait—lady Ann sailed into the room, the servant closing the door so deftly behind her, that it seemed without moving to have given passage to an angelic presence.

The two younger men rose.

“Mr. Wingfold you know, my lady!” said her husband.

“I have not the pleasure,” answered lady Ann, with a slight motion of the hard bud at the top of her long stalk.

“Ah, I thought you did!—The Reverend Mr. Wingfold, lady Ann!—My wife, Mr. Wingfold!—The other gentleman, lady Ann.—”

He paused. Lady Ann turned her eyes slowly on Richard. Wingfold saw a slight, just perceptible start, and a settling of the jaws.

“The other gentleman,” resumed the baronet, “you do not know, but you will soon be the best of friends.”

“I beg your pardon, sir Wilton, I do know him!—I hope,” she went on, turning to Richard, “you will keep steadily to your work. The sooner the books are finished, the better!”

Richard smiled, but what he was on the point of saying, his father prevented.

“You mistake, my lady! I thought you did not know him!” said the baronet. “That gentleman is my son, and will one day be sir Richard.”

“Oh!” returned her ladyship—without a shadow of change in her impassivity, except Wingfold was right in fancying the slightest movement of squint in the eye next him. She held out her hand.

“This is an unexpected—”

For once in her life her lips were truer than her heart: they did not say pleasure.

Richard took her hand respectfully, sad for the woman whose winter had no fuel, and who looked as if she would be cold to all eternity. Lady Ann stared him in the eyes and said,—

“My favourite prayer-book has come to pieces at last: perhaps you would bind it for me?”

“I shall be delighted,” answered Richard.

“Thank you,” she said, bowed to Wingfold, and left the room.

Sir Wilton sat like an offended turkey-cock, staring after her. “By Jove!” he seemed to say to himself.