There & Back Part 61

"The _true_ world! Where's that?" rejoined Tuke, with what would have been a sneer had there been ill-nature in it.

"And that reminds me of another precious thing you've given me," Richard went on: "You've taught me to think for myself!"

"Think for yourself indeed, and talk of any world but the world we've got!"

"If you hadn't taught me," returned Richard, "to think for myself, I should have thought just as you did. But I've been thinking for myself a great deal, and I say now, that, if there be no more of it after we die, then the whole thing is such a sell as even the dumb, deaf, blind, heartless, headless G.o.d you seem to believe in, could not have been guilty of!"

"Ho! ho!--that's the good my teaching has done you? Well, we'll have it out by and by! In the meantime, tell us how it all came about--how you came to know, I mean. You're a good sort, whatever you believe or don't believe, and I wish you were ours in reality!"

"It's just in reality that I am yours!" protested Richard; but his mother broke in.

"Would you dare, John," she cried, "to wish him ours to his loss?"

"No, no, Jane! You know me! It was but a touch of what you call the old Adam--and I the old John! We've got to take care of each other! We're all agreed about that!"

"And you do it, father, and that's before any agreeing about it!"

"Come and let's have our tea!" said the mother; "and Richard shall tell us how it worked round that the old gentleman knew him. I remember him young enough to be no bad match for your mother, and that's enough to say for any man--as to looks, I mean only. There wasn't a more beautiful woman than my sister Robina in all England--and I'm bold to say it--not that it wants much boldness to say the truth!"

"It wants nearly as much at this moment as I have got," returned Richard; for his narrative required, as an essential part of it, that he should tell what had made him go to his father.

He had but begun when a black cloud rose on his mother's face, and she almost started from her seat.

"I told you, Richard, you were to have nothing to do with those creatures!" she cried.

"Mother," answered Richard, "was it G.o.d or the devil told me I must be neighbour to my own brother and sister? Hasn't my father done them wrong enough that you should side with him and want me to carry on the wrong?

I heard the same voice that made you run away with me. You were ready to be hanged for me; I was ready to lose my father for them. He too said I must have done with them, and I told him I wouldn't. That was why I got you to put me on journeyman's wages, uncle. They were starving, and I had nothing to give them. What am I in the world for, if not to set right, so far as I may, what my father has set wrong? You see I _have_ learned something of you, uncle!"

"I don't see what," returned Tuke.

He had been listening with a grave face, for he had his pride, and did not relish his nephew's being hand and glove with his base-born brother and sister.

"Don't you, father? Where's your socialism? I'm only trying to carry it out."

"Out and away, my boy, as Samson did the gates in my mother's old bible!" answered John.

"If a man's socialism don't apply to his own flesh and blood," resumed Richard, "where on earth is it to begin? Must you hate your own flesh, and go to Russia or China for somebody to be fair to? Ain't your own got as good a right to fair play as any, and ain't they the readiest to begin with? Is it selfish to help your own? It ain't the way you've done by me, uncle!"

"You mustn't forget," said John, "that a grave wrong is done the nation when marriage is treated with disrespect."

"It was my father did that! Was it Alice and Arthur that broke the marriage-law by being born out of wedlock?"

"If you treat them like other people, you slight that law."

"If sir Wilton Lestrange were to come into the room this minute, you would offer him a chair; his children you would order out of the house!"

"I wouldn't do that," said Mrs. Tuke.

"Mother, you turned them out of the house!--I beg your pardon, mother, but you know it was the same thing! You visited the sins of the father on the children!"

"Bravo!" cried his uncle; "I thought you couldn't mean the rot!"

"What rot, father?"

"That rot about G.o.d you flung at me first thing."

"Father, it would take the life out of me to believe there was no G.o.d; but the G.o.d I hope in is a very different person from the G.o.d my mother's clergy have taught her to believe in. Father, do you know Jesus Christ!"

"I know the person you mean, my boy."

"I know what _kind_ of person he is, and he said G.o.d was just like him, and in the G.o.d like him, if I can find him, I will believe with all my heart and soul--and so would you, father, if you knew him. You will say, perhaps, he ain't nowhere to know! but you haven't a right to say that until you've been everywhere to look; for such a G.o.d is no absurdity; it's nothing ridiculous to look for him. I beg your pardon, both of you, but I'm bound to speak. Jesus Christ said we must leave father and mother for him, because he is true; and I must speak for him what is true, even if my own father and mother should think me rude."

He had spoken eagerly; and man or woman who does not put truth first, may think he ought to have held his tongue. But neither father nor mother took offence. The mother, unspeakably relieved by what had taken place, was even ready to allow that her favourite preacher might "perhaps dwell too much upon the terrors of the law."

CHAPTER LIII. _MORNING_.

The next post brought a letter from Simon Armour, saying, after his own peculiar fas.h.i.+on, that it was time the thing were properly understood between the parties concerned; but, that done, they must attend to the baronet's wish, and disclose nothing yet: he believed sir Wilton had his reasons. They must therefore, as soon as possible, make it clear to him that there was no break in the chain of their proof of Richard's ident.i.ty. He proposed, therefore, that his daughter should pay her father a visit, and bring Richard.

The suggestion seemed good to all concerned. Criminal as she knew herself, Jane Tuke did not shrink from again facing sir Wilton, with the nephew by her side whom one and twenty years before she had carried in her arms to meet his unfatherly gaze! To her surprise she found that she almost enjoyed the idea.

Richard cashed the post-office-order the old man sent them, and they set out for his cottage.

The same day Simon went to Mortgrange and saw the baronet, who agreed at once to go to the cottage to meet his sister-in-law. The moment he entered the little parlour where they waited to receive him, he made Mrs. Tuke a polite bow, and held out his hand.

"You are the sister of my late wife, I am told," he said.

Jane made him a dignified courtesy, her resentment, after the lapse of twenty years, rising fresh at sight of the man who had behaved so badly to her sister.

"It was you that carried off the child?" said the baronet.

"Yes, sir," answered Jane.

"I am glad I did not know where to look for him. You did me the greatest possible favour. What these twenty years would have been like, with him in the house, I dare not think."

"It was for the child's sake I did it!" said Jane.

"I am perfectly aware it was not for mine!" returned sir Wilton. "Ha!

ha! you looked as if you had come to stab me that day you brought the little object to the library, and gave me such a scare! You presented his fingers and toes to me as if, by Jove, I was the devil, and had made them so on purpose!--I tell you, Richard, if that's your name, you rascal, you have as little idea what a preposterously ugly creature you were, as I had that you would ever grow to be--well, half-fit to look at! I was appalled at the sight of you! And a good thing it was! If I had taken to you, and brought you up at home, it would scarcely have been to your advantage. You would have been worth less than you are, however little that may be! But it doesn't follow you're the least fit to be owned to! You're a tradesman, every inch of you--no more like a gentleman than--well, not half so like a gentleman as your grandfather there! By heaven, the anvil must be some sort of education! Why wasn't _I_ bound apprentice to my old friend Simon there! But, Richard, you don't look a gentleman, though your aunt looks as if she would eat me for saying it.--Now listen to me--all of you. It's no use your saying I've acknowledged him. If I choose to say I know nothing about him, then, as I told the rascal himself the other day, you'll have to prove your case, and that will take money! and when you've proved it, you get nothing but the t.i.tle, and much good that will do you! So you had better make up all your minds to do as I tell you--that is, not to say one word about the affair, but just hold your tongues.--Now none of that looking at one another, as if I meant to do you! I'm not going to have people say my son shows the tradesman in him! I'm not going to have the Lestranges knock under to the Armours! I'm going to have the rascal the gentleman I can make him!--You're to go to college directly, sir; and I don't want to hear of or from you till you've taken your degree! You shall have two hundred a year and pay your own fees--not a penny more if you go on your marrow-bones for it!--You understand? You're not to attempt communicating with me. If there's anything I ought to know, let your grandfather come to me. I will see him when he pleases--or go to him, if he prefers it, and I'm not too gouty! Only, mind, I make no promises! If I should leave all I have to the other lot, you will have no right to complain. With the education I will give you, and the independence your uncle has given you, and the good sense you have on your own hook, you're provided for. You can be a doctor or a parson, you know. There's more than one living in my gift. The Reverend sir Richard Lestrange!--it don't sound amiss. I'm sorry I shan't hear it. I shall be gone where they crop one of everything--even of his good works, the parsons say, but I shan't be much the barer for that! It's hard, confounded hard, though, when they're all a fellow has got!--Now don't say a word! I don't like being contradicted!--not at all! It sends one round on the other tack, I tell you--and there's my gout coming! Only mind this: if once you say who you are as long as you're at college, or before I give you leave, I have done with you. I won't have any little plan of mine forestalled for your vanity! Don't any of you say who he is. It will be better for him--much. If it be but hinted who he is, he'll be courted and flattered, and then he'll be stuck up, and take to spending money! But as sure as h.e.l.l, if he goes beyond his allowance--well, I'll pay it, but it shall be his last day at Oxford. He shall go at once into the navy--or the excise, by George!"

This expression of the baronet's will, if not quite to the satisfaction of every one concerned, was altogether delightful to Richard.

"May I say one word, sir?" he asked.

"Yes, if it's not arguing."

"I've not read a page of Latin since I left school, and I never knew any Greek."