There & Back Part 68

"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-c.o.c.k, staring after her. "By Jove!" he seemed to say to himself.

"There! that's over!" he cried, coming to himself. "Ring the bell, Richard, and let us have lunch.--Richard, _no_ gentleman could have behaved better! I am proud of you!--It's blood that does it!" he murmured to himself.

As if he had himself compounded both his own blood and his boy's in the still-room of creation, he took all the credit of Richard's _savoir faire_, as he counted it. He did not know that the same thing made Wingfold happy and Richard a gentleman! Richard had had a higher breeding than was known to sir Wilton. At the court of courts, whence the manners of some other courts would be swept as dust from the floors, the baronet would hardly gain admittance!

Lady Ann went up the stair slowly and perpendicularly, a dull pain at her heart. The cause was not so much that her son was the second son, as that the son of the blacksmith's daughter was--she took care to say _at first sight_--a finer _gentleman_ than her Arthur. Rank and position, she vaguely reflected, must not look for justice from the jealous heavens! They always sided with the poor! Just see the party-spirit of the Psalms! The rich and n.o.ble were hardly dealt with! Nowadays even the church was with the radicals!

The baronet was merry over his luncheon. The servants wondered at first, but before the soup was removed, they wondered no more: the young man at the table, in whom not one of them had recognized the bookbinder, was the lost heir to Mortgrange! He was worth finding, they agreed--one who would hold his own! The house would be merrier now--thank heaven! They liked Mr. Arthur well enough, but here was his master!

The meal was over, and the baronet always slept after lunch.

"You'll stay to dinner, won't you, Mr. Wingfold?" he said, rising.

"--Richard, ring the bell. Better send for Mrs. Locke at once, and arrange with her where you will sleep."

"Then I may choose my own room, sir?" rejoined Richard.

"Of course--but better not too near my lady's," answered his father with a grim smile as he hobbled from the room.

When the housekeeper came--

"Mrs. Locke," said Richard, "I want to see the room that used to be the nursery--in the older time, I mean."

"Yes, sir," answered Mrs. Locke pleasantly, and led them up two flights of stairs and along corridor and pa.s.sage to the room Richard had before occupied. He glanced round it, and said,

"This shall be my room. Will you kindly get it ready for me."

She hesitated. It had certainly not been repapered, as sir Wilton thought, and had said to Mrs. Tuke! To Mrs. Locke it seemed uninhabitable by a gentleman.

"I will send for the painter and paper-hanger at once," she replied, "but it will take more than a week to get ready."

"Pray leave it as it is," he answered. "--You can have the floor swept of course," he added with a smile, seeing her look of dismay. "I will sleep here to-night, and we can settle afterward what is to be done to it.--There used to be a portrait," he went on, "--over the chimney-piece, the portrait of a lady--not well painted, I fancy, but I liked it: what has become of it?"

Then first it began to dawn on Mrs. Locke that the young man who mended the books and the heir to Mortgrange were the same person.

"It fell down one day, and has not been put up agin," she answered.

"Do you know where it is?"

"I will find it, sir."

"Do, if you please. Whose portrait is it?"

"The last lady Lestrange's, sir.--But bless my stupid old head! it's his own mother's picture he's asking for! You'll pardon me, sir! The thing's more bewildering than you'd think!--I'll go and get it at once."

"Thank you. Mr. Wingfold and I will wait till you bring it."

"There ain't anywhere for you to sit, sir!" lamented the old lady. "If I'd only known! I'm sure, sir, I wish you joy!"

"Thank you, Mrs. Locke. We'll sit here on the mattress."

Richard had not forgotten how the eyes of the picture used to draw his, and he had often since wondered whether it could be the portrait of his mother.

In a few minutes Mrs. Locke reappeared, carrying the portrait, which had never been put in a frame, and knotting the cord, Richard hung it again on the old nail. It showed a well-formed face, but was very flat and wooden. The eyes, however, were comparatively well painted; and it seemed to Richard that he could read both sorrow and disappointment in them, with a yearning after something she could not have.

They went out for a ramble in the park, and there Richard told his friend as much as he knew of his story, describing as well as he understood them the changes that had pa.s.sed upon him in the matter of religion, and making no secret of what he owed to the expostulations and spiritual resistances of Barbara. Wingfold, after listening with profound attention, told him he had pa.s.sed through an experience in many points like, and at the root the same as his own; adding that, long before he was sure of anything, it had become more than possible for him to keep going on; and that still he was but looking and hoping and waiting for a fuller dawn of what had made his being already blessed.

They consulted whether Wingfold should act on the baronet's careless invitation, and concluded it better he should not stay to dinner. Then, as there was yet time, and it was partly on Wingfold's way, they set out for the smithy.

CHAPTER LIX. _WINGFOLD AND ARTHUR MANSON_.

When the first delight of their meeting was abated, Simon sent to let Arthur Manson know that his brother was there. For Arthur had all this time been with Simon, to whom Richard, saving enough from his allowance, had prevented him from being a burden.

He looked much better, and was enchanted to see his brother again, and learn the good news of his recognition by his father. "I'm so glad it's you and not me, Richard!" he said. "It makes me feel quite safe and happy. We shall have nothing now but fair play all round, the rest of our lives! How happy Alice will be!"

"Is Alice still in the old place? I haven't heard of her for some time,"

said Richard.

"Don't you know?" exclaimed Arthur. "She's been at the parsonage for months and months! Mrs. Wingfold went and fetched her away, to work for her, and be near me. She's as happy now as the day is long. She says if everybody was as good as her master and mistress, there would be no misery left in the world."

"I don't doubt it," answered Richard. "--But I've just parted with Mr.

Wingfold, and he didn't say a word about her!"

"When anything has to be done, Mr. Wingfold never forgets it," said Arthur; "but I should just like to hear all the things Mr. Wingfold did and forgot in a month!"

"Arthur's getting on." thought Richard.

But he had to learn how much Wingfold had done for him. First of all he had set himself, by talking to him and lending him books, to find out his bent, or at least something he was capable of. But for months he could not wake him enough to know anything of what was in him: the poor fellow was weary almost to death. At last, however, he got him to observe a little. Then he began to set him certain tasks; and as he was an invalid, the first was what he called "The task of twelve o'clock;"--which was, for a quarter of an hour from every noon during a month, to write down what he then saw going on in the world.

The first day he had nothing to show: he had seen nothing!

"What were the clouds doing?" Mr. Wingfold asked. "What were the horses in the fields doing?--What were the birds you saw doing?--What were the ducks and hens doing?--Put down whatever you see any creature about."

The next evening, he went to him again, and asked him for his paper.

Arthur handed him a folded sheet.

"Now," said Mr. Wingfold, "I am not going to look at this for the present. I am going to lay it in one of my drawers, and you must write another for me to-morrow. If you are able, bring it over to me; if not, lay it by, and do not look at it, but write another, and another--one every day, and give them all to me the next time I come, which will be soon. We shall go on that way for a month, and then we shall see something!"

At the end of the month, Mr. Wingfold took all the papers, and fastened them together in their proper order. Then they read them together, and did indeed see something! The growth of Arthur's observation both in extent and quality, also the growth of his faculty for narrating what he saw, were remarkable both to himself and his instructor. The number of things and circ.u.mstances he was able to see by the end of the month, compared with the number he had seen in the beginning of it, was wonderful; while the mode of his record had changed from that of a child to that almost of a man.