There & Back Part 58

"Drive like Jehu," panted Richard. "Let's see what the blessed pony can do! Every instant is precious."

Never asking the cause of his haste, old Simon did drive like Jehu, and never had the pony gone with a better will: evidently he believed speed was wanted, and knew he had it to give.

No hoofs came clamping on the road behind them. They reached the town in safety, and Richard cashed his cheque--the more easily that Simon, a well-known man in Ba.r.s.et, was seen waiting for him in his trap outside.

The eager, anxious look of Richard, and the way he clutched at the notes, might otherwise have waked suspicion. As it was, it only waked curiosity.

When the man whom Richard had decoyed, appeared at length before his master, whose repeated ringing had brought the butler first; and when sir Wilton, after much swearing on his, and bewilderment on the man's part, made out the trick played on him, his wrath began to evaporate in amus.e.m.e.nt: he was outwitted and outmanoeuvred--but by his own son! and even in the face of such an early outbreak of hostilities, he could not help being proud of him. He burst into a half cynical laugh, and dismissed the men--to vain speculation on the meaning of the affair.

Simon would have had Richard send the bank-notes by post, and stay with him a week or two; but Richard must take them himself; no other way seemed safe. Nor could he possibly rest until he had seen his mother, and told her all. He said nothing to his grandfather of his recognition by sir Wilton, and what followed: he feared he might take the thing in his own hands, and go to sir Wilton.

Questioning his grandfather, he learned that Barbara was at home, but that he had seen her only once. She had one day appeared suddenly at the smithy door, with Miss Brown all in a foam. She asked about Richard, wheeled her mare, and was off homeward, straight as an arrow--for he went to the corner, and looked after her.

They were near a station at Ba.r.s.et, and a train was almost due. Simon drove him there straight from the bank, and before he was home, Richard was half-way to London.

Short as was his visit, he had got from it not merely all he had hoped, but almost all he needed. His weakness had left him; he had twenty pounds for his brother and sister; and his mother was cleared, though he could not yet tell how: was he not also a little step nearer to Barbara?

True, he was disowned, but he had lived without his father hitherto, and could very well go on to live without such a father! As long as he did what was right, the right was on his side! As long as he gave others their rights, he could waive his own! A fellow was not bound, he said, to insist on his rights--at least he had not met with any he was bound to insist upon. Borne swiftly back to London, his heart seemed rus.h.i.+ng in the might of its gladness to console the heaven-laden hearts of Alice and Arthur. Twenty pounds was a great sum to carry them! He could indeed himself earn such a sum in a little while, but how long would it not take him to save as much! Here it was, whole and free, present and potent, ready to be turned at once into food and warmth and hope!

CHAPTER LI

_BARONET AND BLACKSMITH_.

The more sir Wilton's anger subsided, the more his heart turned to Richard, and the more he regretted that he had begun by quarrelling with him. Sir Wilton loved his ease, and was not a quarrelsome man. He could dislike intensely, he could hate heartily, but he seldom quarrelled; and if he could have foreseen how his son would take the demand he made upon him, he would not at the outset have risked it. He liked Richard's looks and carriage. He liked also his spirit and determination, though his first experience of them he could have wished different. He felt also that very little would make of him a man fit to show to the world and be proud of as his son. To his satisfaction on these grounds was added besides a peculiar pleasure in the discovery of him which he could ask no one to share--that it was to him as a lump of dynamite under his wife's lounge, of which no one knew but himself, and which he could at any instant explode. It was sweet to know what he _could_ do! to be aware, and alone aware, of the fool's paradise in which my lady and her brood lived! And already, through his own precipitation, his precious secret was in peril!

The fact gave him not a little uneasiness. His thought was, at the ripest moment of her frosty indifference, to make her palace of ice fly in flinders about her. Then the delight of her perturbation! And he had opened his hand and let his bird fly!

His father did not know Richard's prudence. Like the fool every man of the world is, he judged from Richard's greatness of heart, and his refusal to forsake his friends, that he was a careless, happy-go-lucky sort of fellow, who would bl.u.s.ter and protest. As to the march he had stolen upon him on behalf of the Mansons, he nowise resented that. When pressed by no selfish _necessity,_ he did not care much about money; and his son's prompt.i.tude greatly pleased him.

"The fellow shall go to college," he said to himself; "and I won't give my lady even a hint before I have him the finest gentleman and the best scholar in the county! He shall be both! I will teach him billiards myself! By Jove! it is more of a pleasure than at my years I had a right to expect! To think of an old sinner like me being blessed with such a victory over his worst enemy! It is more than I could deserve if I lived to the age of Mephistopheles! I shouldn't like to live so long--there's so little worth remembering! I wish forgetting things wiped them out!

There are things I hardly know whether I did or only wanted to do!--d.a.m.n it, it may be all over Ba.r.s.et by this time, that the heir to sir Wilton's property has turned up!"

He rang the bell, and ordered his carriage.

"I must see the old fellow, the rascal's grandfather!" he kept on to himself. "I haven't exchanged a word with him for years! And now I think of it, I take poor Robina's father for a very decent sort of fellow! If he had but once hinted what he was, every soul in the parish would have known it! I _must_ find out whether he's in my secret! I can't _prove_ it yet, but perhaps he can!"

Simon Armour was not astonished to see the Lestrange carriage stop at the smithy: he thought sir Wilton had come about the cheque. He went out, and stood in hairy arms and leather ap.r.o.n at the carriage door.

"Well, Armour, how are you?" said the baronet.

"Well and hearty, sir, I thank you," answered Simon.

"I want a word with you," said sir Wilton.

"Shall I tell the coachman to drive round to the cottage, sir?"

"No; I'll get out and walk there with you."

Simon opened the carriage-door, and the baronet got out.

"That grandson of yours--" he began, the moment they were in Simon's little parlour.

Simon started. "The old wretch knows!" he said to himself.

"--has been too much for me!" continued sir Wilton. "He got a cheque out of me whether I would or not!"

"And got the money for it, sir!" answered the smith. "He seemed to think the money better than the cheque!"

"I don't blame him, by Jove! There's decision in the fellow!--They say his father's a bookbinder in London!"

"Yes, sir."

"You know better! I don't want humbug, Armour! I'm not fond of it!"

"You told me people said his father was a bookbinder, and I said 'Yes, sir'!"

"You know as well as I do it's a d.a.m.ned lie! The boy is mine. He belongs neither to bookbinder nor blacksmith!"

"You'll allow me a small share in him, I hope! I've done more for him than you, sir."

"That's not my fault!"

"Perhaps not; but I've done more for him than you ever will, sir!"

"How do you make that out?"

"I've made him as good a shoesmith as ever drove nail! I don't say he's up to his grandfather at the anvil yet, but--"

"An accomplishment no doubt, but not exactly necessary to a gentleman!"

"It's better than dicing or card-playing!" said the blacksmith.

"You're right there! I hope he has learned neither. I want to teach him those things myself.--He's not an ill-looking fellow!"

"There's not a better lad in England, sir! If you had brought him up as he is, you might ha' been proud o' your work!"

"_He_ seems proud of somebody's work!--prouder of himself than his prospects, by Jove!" said sir Wilton, feeling his way. "You should have taught him not to quarrel with his bread and b.u.t.ter!"

"I never saw any call to teach him that. He never quarrelled with anything at my table, sir. A man who has earned his own bread and b.u.t.ter ever since he left school, is not likely to quarrel with it."

"You don't say _he_ has done so?"

"I do--and can prove it!--Did you tell him, sir, you were his father?"

"Of course I did!--and before I said another word, there we were quarrelling--just as it was with me and my father!"

"He never told me!" said Simon, half to himself, and ready to feel hurt.