There & Back Part 60

"I will give you that promise--always provided she can prove that what was past and gone is come again. I shall insist upon that!"

"Most properly, sir I You shall not have to wait for it.--And now, if you will take me to the post-office, I will send a telegram to Richard, warning him to hold his tongue."

"Good! Come."

They walked to the carriage, and Simon, displacing the footman, got up beside the coachman. He was careful, however, to be set down before they got within sight of the post-office.

The message he sent was--

"I know all, and will write. Say nothing but to your mother."

CHAPTER LII. _UNCLE-FATHER AND AUNT-MOTHER_.

When Richard reached London, he went straight to Clerkenwell. There he found Arthur, in bed and unattended, but covered up warm. Except one number of _The Family Herald_, he had nothing to read. The room was tidy, but very dreary. Richard asked him why he did not move into the front room. Arthur did not explain, but Richard understood that the mother had left so many phantasms behind her that he preferred his own dark chamber. When Richard told him what he had done and the success he had had, he thanked him with such a shining face that Richard saw in it the birth of saving hope.

"And now, Arthur," he said, "you must get better as fast as you can; and the first minute you are able to be moved, we'll ship you off to my grandfather's, where Alice was."

"Away from Alice?"

"Yes; but you must remember there will be so much more for her to eat, and so much more money to get things comfortable with by the time you come back. Besides, you will grow well faster, and then perhaps we shall find some fitter work for you than that hideous clerking!"

The flush of joy on Arthur's cheek was a divine reward to Richard for what he had done and suffered and sacrificed for the sake of his brother. He made a fire, and having set on the kettle, went to buy some things, that he might have a nice supper ready for Alice when she came home. Next he found two clean towels, and covered the little table, forgetting all his troubles in the gladness of ministration, and the new life that hope gives. If only we believed in G.o.d, how we should hope!

And what would not hope do to reveal the new heavens and the new earth--that is, to show us the real, true, and gracious aspect of those heavens and that earth in which we now live so sadly, and are not at home, because we do not see them as they are, do not recognize in them the beginning of the inheritance we long for!

When Alice came in, she heard Arthur cough, and hurried up; but before she reached the top of the second stair, she heard a laugh which, though feeble, was of such merry enjoyment, that it filled her with wonder and gladness. Had the fairy G.o.d-mother appeared at last? What could have come to make Arthur laugh like that? She opened the door, and all was explained: there sat the one joy of their life, their brother Richard, looking much like himself again! What a healer, what a strength-giver is joy! Will not holy joy at last drive out every disease in the world?

Will it not be the elixir of life, and drive out death? She sprang upon him, and burst out weeping.

"Come and have supper," he said. "I've been out to buy it, and haven't much time to help you eat it. My father and mother don't know where I am."

Then he told her what he had been about. It was with a happy heart he made his way home, for he left happy hearts behind him. He wondered that his mother was not surprised to see him--wondered too why she looked so troubled.

"What does this telegram mean?" she asked.

"I don't know, mother," he replied. "Won't you give me a kiss first?"

She threw her arms about him. "You won't give up saying _mother_ to me, will you?" she pleaded, fighting with her emotion.

"It will be a bad day for me when I do!" he answered. "My mother you are and shall be. But I don't understand it!"

The telegram let him know that sir Wilton and his grandfather had been in communication, and gave him hope that things might be accommodated between him and his father.

"You've got your real father now, Richard!" said his mother.

But she saw an expression on his face that made her add,--

"You must respect your father, Richard--now you know him for your father."

"I can't respect him, mother. He is not a good man. I can only love him."

"You have no right to find fault with him. He was not to blame that I carried you away when your mother died! I was terrified at your stepmother!"

"I don't wonder at that, mother!--Ah, now I begin to understand it all!--But, mother, if my father had been a good man, I don't believe you would hare carried me away from him!"

"Very likely not, my boy--though he did make me that angry by calling you ugly! And I don't believe I should have taken you at all, if that woman hadn't sent me away for no reason but to have a nurse of her choosing. How could I leave my sister's child in the power of such a woman! Day and night, Richard, was I haunted with the sight of her cold face hanging over you. I was certain the devil might have his way with her when he chose: there was no love in her to prevent him. In my dreams I saw her giving you poison, or with a pen-knife in her hand, and her eyes shining like ice. I could _not_ bear it. I should have gone mad to leave you there. I knew I was committing a crime in the eyes of the law; but I felt a stronger law compelling me; and I said to myself, 'I will be hanged for my child, rather than my child should be murdered! I will _not_ leave him with that woman!' So I took you, Richard!"

"Thank you, mother, a thousand times! I am sure it was right, and every way best for me! Oh, how much I owe you and my--uncle! I must call you _mother_ still, but I'm afraid I shall have to call my father _uncle_!"

"It won't hurt him, Richard; he has been a good uncle to you, but I don't think he would have taught you the things he did, if you had been his very own child!"

"He has done me no harm, mother,--nothing but good," said Richard.

"--And so you are my own mother's sister?"

"Yes, and a good mother she would have been to you! You must not think of her as a grim old woman like me! She was but six and twenty when you were born and she died! She was the most beautiful woman _I_ ever saw, Richard!--Never another woman's hand has touched your body but hers and mine, Richard!"

He took her hand and kissed it. Jane Tuke had never had her hand kissed before, and would have drawn it away. The lady within was ashamed of her rough gloves, not knowing they had won her her ladyhood. In the real world, there are no ladies but true women. Also they only are beautiful.

All there show what they are, and the others are all more or less deformed. Oh, what lovely ladies will walk into the next world out of the rough coc.o.o.n of their hard-wrought bodies--not because they have been working women, but because they have been true women. Among working women as among countesses, there are last that shall be first, and first that shall be last. _What kind of woman_ will be the question. Alas for those, whether high or low or in the middle, whose business in life has been to be ladies! What poor, mean, draggled, unangelic things will come crawling out of the husk they are leaving behind them, which yet, perhaps, will show a glimmer, in the whiteness of death, of what they were meant to be, if only they had lived, had _been_, had put forth the power that was in them as their birthright! Not a few I know will crawl out such, except they awake from the dead, and cry for life. Perhaps one and another in the next world will say to me, "You meant me! I know now why you were always saying such things!" For I suspect the next world will more plainly be a going on with this than most people think--only it will be much better for some, and much worse for others, as the Lord has taught us in the parable of the rich man and the beggar.

"No, Richard," resumed his aunt, "your father was not a good man, but he may be better now, and perhaps you will help him to be better still."

"It's doubtful if ever I have the chance," returned Richard. "We've had a pretty fair quarrel already!"

"He can't take your birthright from you!" she cried.

"That may be--but what _is_ my birthright? He told me the land was not entailed; he can leave it to anybody he likes. But I'm not going to do what he would have me do--that is if it be wrong," added Richard, not willing to start the question about the Mansons. "To be a sneak would be a fine beginning! If that's to be a gentleman, I will be no gentleman!"

"Right you are, my son!" said Tuke, who that moment came in.

"Oh uncle!" cried Richard, starting to his feet.

"_Uncle_!--Ho! ho! What's up now?"

"Nothing's up, but all's out, father!" answered Richard, putting his hand in that of the bookbinder. "You knew, and now I know! How shall I ever thank you for what you have done for me, and been to me, and given me!"

"Precious little anyway, my boy! I wish it had been a great deal more."

"Shall I tell you what you have done for me I--You made a man of me first of all, by giving me a trade, and making me independent. Then again, by that trade you taught me to love the very shape of a book.

Baronet or no baronet,--"

"What do you mean?"

"My father threatens to disown me."

"He can't take your rank from you. We'll have you sir Richard anyhow!--An' I'd let 'em see that a true baronet--"

"--is just a true man, uncle." interposed Richard; "and that you've helped to make me. It's being independent and helping others, not being a baronet, that will make a gentleman of me! That's how it goes in the true world anyhow!"