There & Back

“Are you going back to the bookbinding?” she said.

“I do not know. Sir Wilton—my father hasn’t told me yet what he wants me to do.—Wasn’t it good of him to send me to Oxford?”

“You’ve been at Oxford then all this time?—I suppose he will make an officer of you now!—Not that I care! I am content with whatever contents you!”

“I dare say he will hardly like me to live by my hands!” answered Richard, laughing. “He would count it a degradation! There I shall never be able to think like a gentleman!”

Barbara looked perplexed.

“You don’t mean to say he’s going to treat you just like one of the rest” she exclaimed.

“I really do not know,” answered Richard; “but I think he would hardly enjoy the thought of Sir Richard Lestrange over a bookbinder’s shop in Hammersmith or Brentford!”

“Sir Richard! You do not mean—?”

Her face grew white; her eyes fell; her hand trembled on Richard’s arm.

“What is troubling you, dearest?” he asked, in his turn perplexed.

“I can’t understand it.” she answered.

“Is it possible you do not know, Barbara?” he returned. “I thought Mr. Wingfold must have told you!—Sir Wilton says I am his son that was lost. Indeed there is no doubt of it.”

“Richard! Richard! believe me I didn’t know. Lady Ann told me you were not—”

“How then should I have dared put my arms round you, Barbara?”

“Richard, I care nothing for what the world thinks! I care only for what God thinks.”

“Then, Barbara, you would have married me, believing me base born?”

“Oh Richard! you thought it was knowing who you were that made me—! Richard! Richard! I did not think you could have wronged me so! My father sold Miss Brown because I would not marry your brother and be lady Lestrange. If you had not asked me, and I had been sure it was only because of your birth you wouldn’t, I should have found some way of letting you know I cared no more for that than God himself does. The god of the world is the devil. He has many names, but he’s all the same devil, as Mr. Wingfold says.—I wonder why he never told me!—I’m glad he didn’t. If he had, I shouldn’t be here now!”

“I am very glad too, Barbara; but it wouldn’t have made so much difference: I was only here on my way to you! But suppose it had been as you thought, it was one thing what you would do, and another what I would ask you to do!”

“What I would have done was what you should have believed I would do!”

“You must just pardon me, Barbara: well as I thought I knew you, I did not know you enough!”

“You do now?”

‘“I do.”

There came a silence.

“How long have you known this about yourself, Richard?” said Barbara.

“More than four years.”

“And you never told me!”

“My father wished it kept a secret for a time.”

“Did Mr. Wingfold know?”

“Not till yesterday.”

“Why didn’t he tell me yesterday, then?”

“I think he wouldn’t have told you if he had known all the time.”

“Why?”

“For the same reason that made him leave us together so suddenly—that you might not be hampered by knowing it—that we might understand each other before you knew. I see it all now! It was just like him!”

“Oh, he is a friend!” cried Barbara. “He knows what one is, and so knows what one is thinking!”

A silent embrace followed, and then Barbara said, “You must come and see my mother!”

“Hadn’t you better tell her first?” suggested Richard.

“She knows—knows what you didn’t know—what I’ve been thinking all the time,” rejoined Barbara, with a rosy look of confidence into his eyes.

“She can never have been willing you should marry a tradesman—and one, besides, who—!”

“She knew I would—and that I should have money, else she might not have been willing. I don’t say she likes the idea, but she is determined I shall have the man I love—if he will have me,” she added shyly.

“Did you tell her you—cared for me?”

He could not say loved yet; he felt an earthy pebble beside a celestial sapphire!

“Of course I did, when papa wanted me to have Arthur!—not till then; there was no occasion! I could not tell what your thoughts were, but my own were enough for that.”

Mrs. Wylder was taken with Richard the moment she saw him; and when she heard his story, she was overjoyed, and would scarcely listen to a word about the uncertainty of his prospects. That her Bab should marry the man she loved, and that the alliance should be what the world counted respectable, was enough for her. When Richard told his father what he had done, saying they had fallen in love with each other while yet ignorant of his parentage, a glow of more than satisfaction warmed sir Wilton’s consciousness. It was lovely! Lady Ann was being fooled on all sides!

“Richard has been making good use of his morning!” he said at dinner. “He has already proposed to Miss Wylder and been accepted! Richard is a man of action—a practical fellow!”

Lady Ann did perhaps turn a shade paler, but she smiled. It was not such a blow as it might have been, for she too had given up hope of securing her for Arthur. But it was not pleasant to her that the grandchild of the blacksmith should have Barbara’s money. Theodora was puzzled.

CHAPTER LXII. THE QUARREL

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.