There & Back Part 66

Arthur Lestrange was sharply troubled when he found he was to see no more of Barbara. He went again and again to Wylder Hall, but neither mother nor daughter would receive him. When he learned that Miss Brown was for sale, he bought her for love of her mistress. All the explanation he could get from lady Ann was, that the young woman's mother was impossible; she was more than half a savage.

Time's wheels went slow thereafter at Mortgrange. Sir Wilton missed his firstborn. Whatever annoyed him in his wife or any of her children, fed the desire for Richard. Arthur did not please him. He had no way distinguished himself--and some men are annoyed when their sons prove only a little better than themselves. Percy was a poisoned thorn in his side: he was even worse than his father. All his thoughts took refuge in Richard.

He had become dissatisfied with his agent, and although he had never taken an interest in business, distrust made him now look into things a little. He called his lawyer from London, and had him make a thorough investigation. Dismissing thereupon his agent, he would have Arthur take charge of the estate; but the young man, with an inborn dislike to figures, flatly refused, saying he preferred the army. Sir Wilton did not like the army: he had been in it himself, and had left it in a hurry--no one ever knew why.

The only comfort in the house occupied the soul of lady Ann: it was that she heard nothing of the bookbinder fellow! She had grown so torpid, that while Danger was not flattening his nose against the window-pane, she was at peace. For the rest, a lawyer of her own had the will in his keeping, and she had come upon no trace of another.

But when sir Wilton sent for his lawyer to look into his factor's accounts, he had a further use for him, of which his wife heard nothing: he made him draw up another will, in which he left everything to Richard, only son of his first wife, Robina Armour. With every precaution for secrecy, the will was signed and witnessed, but when the lawyer would have carried it with him, the baronet declined to give it up. He laid it aside for a week, then had the horses put to, and drove to find Mr. Wingfold, of whom he had heard from Richard. When he saw him, man of the world as he was, he was impressed by the simplicity of a clergyman without a touch of the clerical, without any look of what he called _sanct.i.ty_--the look that comes upon a man cherishing the notion that he is intrusted with things more sacred than G.o.d will put in the hands of his other children. Such men, and they are many, one would like to lay for a time in the sheet of Peter's vision, among the four-footed animals and creeping things, to learn that, as there is nothing common or unclean, so is there no cla.s.s more sacred than another. Never will it be right with men, until every commonest meal is a glad recognition of the living Saviour who gives himself, always and perfectly, to his brothers and sisters.

The baronet begged a private interview, and told the parson he wanted to place in his keeping a certain paper, with the understanding that he would not open it for a year after his death, and would then act upon the directions contained in it.

"Provided always," Wingfold stipulated, "that they require of me nothing unfit, impossible, or wrong."

"I pledge myself they require nothing unworthy of the cloth," said sir Wilton.

"The cloth be hanged!" said Wingfold. "Do they require anything unworthy of a man--or if you think the word means more--of a gentleman?"

"They do not," answered the baronet.

"Then you must write another paper, stating that you have asked me to undertake this, but that you have given me no hint of the contents of the accompanying doc.u.ment. This second you must enclose with the first, sealing the envelope with your own seal."

Sir Wilton at once consented, and there and then did as Wingfold desired.

"I've check-mated my lady at last!" he chuckled, as he drove home. "She would have me the villain to disinherit my firstborn for her miserable brood! She shall find my other will, and think she's safe! Then the thunderbolt--and d.i.c.k master! My lady's dower won't be much for Percy the cad and Arthur the proper, not to mention Dorothy the cow, and Vixen the rat!"

He always spoke as if lady Ann's children were none of his. Her ladyship had taught him to do so, for she always said, "_My_ children!"

That night he slept with an easier mind. He had put the deed off and off, regarding it as his abdication; but now it was done he felt more comfortable.

Wingfold suspected in the paper some provision for Richard, but could imagine no reason for letting it lie unopened until a year should have pa.s.sed from the baronet's death. Troubling himself nothing, however, about what was not his business, he put the paper carefully aside--but where he must see it now and then, lest it should pa.s.s from his mind, and with sir Wilton's permission, told his wife what he had undertaken concerning it, that she might carry it out if he were prevented from doing so.

Time went on. Communication grew yet less between Mr. Wylder and his family. He had returned to certain old habits, and was spending money pretty fast in London. Failing to make himself a G.o.d in the house, he forsook it, and was rapidly losing this world's chance of appreciating a woman whose faults were to his as new wine to dirty water.

In the fourth year, Richard wrote to his father, through his grandfather of course, informing him he had got his B.A. degree, and was waiting further orders. The baronet was heartily pleased with the style of his letter, and in the privacy of his own room gave way to his delight at the thought of his wife's approaching consternation and chagrin. At the same time, however, he was not a little uneasy in prospect of the denouement. For the eyes of his wife had become almost a terror to him.

Their grey ice, which had not grown clearer as it grew older, made him shiver. Why should the stronger so often be afraid of the weaker?

Sometimes, I suppose, because conscience happens to side with the weaker; sometimes only because the weaker is yet able to make the stronger, especially if he be lazy and a lover of what he calls peace, worse than uncomfortable. The baronet dared not present his son to his wife except in the presence of at least one stranger. He wrote to Richard, appointing a day for his appearance at Mortgrange.

CHAPTER LVIII. _THE HEIR_.

It was a lovely morning when Richard, his heart beating with a hope whose intensity of bliss he had never imagined, stopped at the station nearest to Mortgrange, and set out to walk there in the afternoon sun.

June folded him in her loveliness of warmth and colour. The gra.s.s was washed with transparent gold: he saw both the gold and the green together, but unmingled. Often had he walked the same road, a contented tradesman; a gentleman now, with a baronet to his father, he loved, and knew he must always love the tradesman-uncle more than the baronet-father. He was much more than grateful to his father for his ready reception of him, and his care of his education; but he could not be proud of him as of his mother and his aunt and uncle and his grandfather. He held it one of G.o.d's greatest gifts to come of decent people; and if in his case the decency was on one side only, it was the more his part to stop the current of transmitted evil, and in his own person do what he might to annihilate it!

His only anxiety was lest his father should again lay upon him the command to cease communication with his brother and sister. He lifted up his heart to G.o.d, and vowed that not for anything the earth could give would he obey. The socialism he had learned from his uncle had undergone a baptism to something infinitely higher. He prayed G.o.d to keep him clean of heart, and able to hold by his duty. He promised G.o.d--it was a way he had when he would bind himself to do right--that he would not forsake his own, would not break the ties of blood for any law, custom, prejudice, or pride of man. The vow made his heart strong and light. But he felt there was little merit in the act, seeing he could live without his father's favour. He saw how much harder it would be for a poor tradeless man like Arthur Lestrange to make such a resolve. In the face of such a threat from his father what could he do?--where find courage to resist? Resist he must, or be a slave, but hard indeed it would be!

Every father, thought Richard, who loved his children, ought to make them independent of himself, that neither clog, nor net, nor hindrance of any kind might hamper the true working of their consciences: then would the service they rendered their parents be precious indeed! then indeed would love be lord, and neither self, nor the fear of man, nor the fear of fate be a law in their life!

He had not sent word to his grandfather that he was coming, and had told his father that he would walk from the station--which suited sir Wilton, for he felt nervous, and was anxious there should be no stir. So Richard came to Mortgrange as quietly as a star to its place.

When he reached the gate and walked in as of old, he was challenged by the woman who kept it: of all the servants she and lady Ann's maid had alone treated him with rudeness, and now she was not polite although she did not know him. Neither was he recognized by the man who opened the door.

Sir Wilton sat in the library expecting him. A gentleman was with him, but he kept in the background, seemingly absorbed in the t.i.tles of a row of books.

"There you are, you rascal!" his father was on the point of saying as Richard came into the light of the one big bow-window, but, instead, he gazed at him for an instant in silence. Before him was one of the handsomest fellows his eyes had ever rested upon--broad-shouldered and tall and straight, with a thoughtful yet keen face, of which every feature was both fine and solid, and dark brown hair with night and firelight in it, and a touch of the sun here and there at moments. The situation might have been embarra.s.sing to a more experienced man than Richard as he waited for his father to speak; but he stood quite at his ease, slightly bent, and motionless, neither hands nor feet giving him any of the trouble so often caused by those outlying provinces. The slight colour that rose in his rather thin cheeks, only softened the beauty of a face whose outline was severe. He stood like a soldier waiting the word of his officer.

"By Jove!" said his father; and there was another pause.

The baronet was momently growing prouder of his son. He had never had a feeling like it before. He saw his mother in him.

"She's looking at me straight out of his eyes!" he said to himself.

"Ain't you going to sit down?" he said to him at last, forgetting that he had neither shaken hands with him, nor spoken a word of welcome.

Richard moved a chair a little nearer and sat down, wondering what would come next.

"Well, what are you going to do?" asked his father.

"I must first know your wish, sir," he answered.

"Church won't do?"

"No, sir."

"Glad to hear it! You're much too good for the church!--No offence, Mr.

Wingfold! The same applies to yourself."

"So my uncle on the stock-exchange used to say!" answered Wingfold, laughing, as he turned to the baronet. "He thought me good enough, I suppose, for a priest of Mammon!"

"I'm glad you're not offended. What do you think of that son of mine?"

"I have long thought well of him."

At the first sound of his voice, Richard had risen, and now approached him, his hand outstretched.

"Mr. Wingfold!" he said joyfully.

"I remember now!" returned sir Wilton; "it was from him I heard of you; and that was what made me seek your acquaintance.--He promises fairly, don't you think?--Shoulders good; head well set on!"

"He looks a powerful man!" said Wingfold. "--We shall be happy to see you, Mr. Lestrange, as soon as you care to come to us."

"That will be to-morrow, I hope, sir," answered Richard.

"Stop, stop!" cried sir Wilton. "We know nothing for certain yet!--By the bye, if your stepmother don't make you particularly welcome, you needn't be surprised, my boy!"

"Certainly not. I could hardly expect her to be pleased, sir!"

"Not pleased? Not pleased at what? Now, now, don't you presume! Don't you take things for granted! How do you know she will have reason to be displeased? I never promised you anything! I never told you what I intended!--Did I ever now?"