There & Back

He turned to the door.

“You will consider it?” said her ladyship in her stateliest yet softest tone.

“I will. I shall continue to consider it the worst insult you could have offered my father, your late husband. Thank God, he was my mother’s husband first!”

“What am I to understand by that?”

“Whatever your ladyship chooses, except that I will not hold any farther communication with you on the matter.”

“Then you mean to dispute the title?”

“I decline to say what I mean or do not mean to do.”

Lady Ann rose to ring the bell.

Miss Malliver met Richard in the doorway. He turned.

“I am going to bid Theodora good-bye,” he said.

“You shall do no such thing!” cried her ladyship.

Richard flew up the stair, and, believing Miss Malliver had not gone to his sister, went straight to her room.

The moment Theodora saw him, she sprang from the bed where she had lain weeping, and threw herself into his arms. He was the only one who had ever made her feel what a man might be to a woman! He told her he had come to bid her good-bye. She looked wild.

“But you’re not going really—for altogether?” she said.

“My dear sister, what else can I do? Nobody here wants me!”

“Indeed, Richard, I do!”

“I know you do—and the time will come when you shall have me; but you would not have me live where I am not loved!”

“Richard!” she cried, with a burst of indignation, the first, I fancy, she had ever felt, or at least given way to, “you are the only gentleman in the family!”

Richard laughed, and Theodora dried her eyes. Miss Malliver was near enough to be able to report, and the poor girl had a bad time of it in consequence.

“I will not trouble Arthur,” said Richard. “Say good-bye to him for me, and give him my love. Please tell him that, although all I had was my father’s yet, as between him and me, Miss Brown is mine, and I expect him to send her to Wylder Hall. Good-bye again to my dear sister! I leave a bit of my heart in the house, where I know it will not be trampled on!”

Theodora could not speak. Her only answer was another embrace, and they parted.

Richard went to see Barbara, and found her at the parsonage.

“What an opportunity you have,” said Wingfold, “of maintaining before the world the honour of work! The man who makes a thing exist that did not exist, or who sets anything right that had gone wrong, must be more worthy than he who only consumes what exists, or helps things to remain wrong!”

“But,” suggested Barbara, with her usual keenness, “are you not now encouraging him to seek the praise of men? To seek it for a good thing, is the more contemptible.”

“There is little praise to be got from men for that,” said Wingfold; “and I am sure Richard does not seek any. He would help men to see that the man who serves his neighbour, is the man whom the Lord of the universe honours. An idle man, or one busy only for himself, is like a lump of refuse floating this way and that in the flux and reflux of the sewer-tide of the world. Were Richard lord of lands it would be absurd of him to give his life to bookbinding; that would be to desert his neighbour on those lands; but what better can he do now than follow the trade by which he may at once earn his living? To omit the question of possibility,—suppose he read for the bar, would that bring him closer to humanity? Would it be a diviner mode of life? Is it a more honourable thing to win a cause—perhaps for the wrong man—than to preserve an old and valuable book? Will a man rank higher in the kingdom that shall not end, because he has again and again rendered unrighteousness triumphant? Would Richard’s mind be as free in chambers as in the workshop to search into truth, or as keen to suspect its covert? Would he sit closer to the well-springs of thought and aspiration in a barrister’s library, than among the books by which he wins his bread?”

With eternity before them, and God at the head and the heart of the universe, Richard and Barbara did not believe in separation any more than in death. He in London and she at Wylder Hall, they were far more together than most unparted pairs.

Wingfold set himself to keep Barbara busy, giving her plenty to read and plenty of work: her waiting should be no loss of time to her if he could help it! Among other things, he set her to teach his boy where she thought herself much too ignorant: he held, not only that to teach is the best way to learn, but that the imperfect are the best teachers of the imperfect. He thought this must be why the Lord seems to regard with so much indifference the many falsehoods uttered of and for him. When a man, he said, agonized to get into other hearts the thing dear to his own, the false intellectual or even moral forms in which his ignorance and the crudity of his understanding compelled him to embody it, would not render its truth of none effect, but might, on the contrary, make its reception possible where a truer presentation would stick fast in the door-way.

He made Richard promise to take no important step for a year without first letting him know. He was anxious he should have nothing to undo because of what the packet committed to his care might contain.

CHAPTER LXV. THE PACKET

The day so often in Wingfold’s thought, arrived at last—the anniversary of the death of sir Wilton. He rose early, his mind anxious, and his heart troubled that his mind should be anxious, and set out for London by the first train. Arrived; he sought at once the office of sir Wilton’s lawyer, and when at last Mr. Bell appeared, begged him to witness the opening of the packet. Mr. Bell broke the seal himself, read the baronet’s statement of the request he had made to Wingfold, and then opened the enclosed packet.

“A most irregular proceeding!” he exclaimed—as well he might: his late client had committed to the keeping of the clergyman of another parish, the will signed and properly witnessed, which Mr. Bell had last drawn up for him, and of which, as it was nowhere discoverable, he had not doubted the destruction! Here it was, devising and bequeathing his whole property, real and personal, exclusive only of certain legacies of small account, to Richard Lestrange, formerly known as Richard Tuke, reputed son of John and Jane Tuke, born Armour, but in reality sole son of Wilton Arthur Lestrange, of Mortgrange and Cinqmer, Baronet, and Robina Armour his wife, daughter of Simon Armour, Blacksmith, born in lawful wedlock in the house of Mortgrange, in the year 18—!—and so worded, at the request of sir Wilton, that even should the law declare him supposititious, the property must yet be his!

“This will be a terrible blow to that proud woman!” said Mr. Bell. “You must prepare her for the shock!”

“Prepare lady Ann!” exclaimed Wingfold. “Believe me, she is in no danger! An earthquake would not move her.”

“I must see her lawyer at once!” said Mr. Bell, rising.

“Let me have the papers, please,” said Wingfold. “Sir Wilton did not tell me to bring them to you. I must take them to sir Richard.”

“Then you do not wish me to move in the matter?”

“I shall advise sir Richard to put the affair in your hands; but he must do it; I have not the power.”

“You are very right. I shall be here till five o’clock.”

“I hope to be with you long before that!”

It took Wingfold an hour to find Richard. He heard the news without a word, but his eyes flashed, and Wingfold knew he thought of Barbara and his mother and the Mansons. Then his face clouded.

“It will bring trouble on the rest of my father’s family!” he said.

“Not upon all of them,” returned Wingfold; “and you have it in your power to temper the trouble. But I beg you will not be hastily generous, and do what you may regret, finding it for the good of none.”

“I will think well before I do anything,” answered Richard. “But there may be another will yet!”

“Of course there may! No one can tell. In the meantime we must be guided by appearances. Come with me to Mr. Bell.”

“I must see my mother first.”

He found her ironing a shirt for him, and told her the news. She received them quietly. So many changes had got both her and Richard into a sober way of expecting. They went to Mr. Bell, and Richard begged him to do what he judged necessary. Mr. Bell at once communicated with lady Ann’s lawyer, and requested him to inform her ladyship that sir Richard would call upon her the next day. Mr. Wingfold accompanied him to Mortgrange. Lady Ann received them with perfect coolness.

“You are, I trust, aware of the cause of my visit, lady Ann?” said Richard.

“I am.”

“May I ask what you propose to do?”

“That, excuse me, is my affair. It lies with me to ask you what provision you intend making for sir Wilton’s family.”