There & Back Part 62

"Oh! ah! I forgot that predicament! You must have a tutor to prepare you!--but you shall go to Oxford with him. I will _not_ have you loafing about here! You may remain with your grandfather till I find one, but you're not to come near Mortgrange."

"I may go to London with my mother, may I not?" said Richard.

"I see nothing against that. It will be the better way."

"If you please, sir Wilton," said Mrs. Tuke, "I left evidence at Mortgrange of what I should have to say."

"What sort of evidence?"

"Things that belonged to the child and myself."

"Where?"

"Hid in the nursery."

"My lady had everything moved, and the room fresh-papered after you left. I remember that distinctly."

"Did she say nothing about finding anything?"

"Nothing.--Of course she wouldn't!"

"I left a box of my own, with--"

"You'll never see it again."

"The things the child always wore when he went out, were under the wardrobe."

"Oblige me by saying nothing about them. I am perfectly satisfied, and believe every word you say. I believe Richard there the child of your sister Robina and myself; and it shall not be my fault if he don't have his rights! At the same time I promise nothing, and will manage things as I see best."

"At your pleasure, sir!" answered Mrs. Tuke.

"Should you mind, sir, if I went to see Mr. Wingfold before I go?" asked Richard.

"Who's he?"

"The clergyman of the next parish, sir."

"I don't know him--don't want to know him!--What have you got to do with _him_?"

"He was kind to me when I was down here before."

"I don't care you should have much to do with the clergy."

"You said, sir, I might go into the church!"

"_That's_ another thing quite! You would have the thing in your own hands then!"

Richard was silent. There was no point to argue. The moment sir Wilton was gone, Simon turned to his grandson.

"It was a pity you asked him about Mr. Wingfold. The only thing is you mustn't let out his secret. As to seeing Mr. Wingfold, or Miss Wylder either, just do as you please."

"No, grandfather. If I had not asked him, perhaps I might; but to ask him, and then not do what he told me, would be a sneaking shame!"

"You're right, my boy! Hold on that way, and you'll never be ashamed--or make your people ashamed either."

For the meantime, then, Richard went to London with his mother; and so anxious was old Simon, stimulated in part by the faithfulness of his grandson, to do nothing that might thwart the pleasure of the tyrant, that when first Wingfold asked after Richard, he told him he was at home, and the next time that he was at work in the country.

Richard went on helping his uncle, and going often to see his brother and sister. When Arthur was able for the journey, both he and Alice went with him. At the station they were met by Simon, with an old post-chaise he had to mend up. Having seen Arthur comfortably settled, his brother and sister went back to London together--Alice to go into a single room, and betake herself once more to her work, but with new courage and hope; Richard to the book-binding till his father should have found a tutor for him.

The Tukes were slowly becoming used, if not reconciled, to his care of the Mansons. His mother, indignant for her deceased sister, stood out the stiffest; the bookbinder could not fail to see that the youth was but putting in practice the socialistic theories he had himself sought to teach him. True, the thing came straight from the heart of Richard, and went much farther than his uncle's theories; but his uncle counted it the result of his own training, and woke at last to the fact that his theories were better than he had himself known.

With the help of the head of the college to which sir Wilton had resolved to send his son, a tutor was at length found--happily for Richard, one of the right sort. They went together to Oxford, and set to work at once. It would be hard to say which of the two reaped the more pleasure from the relation, or which, in the duplex process of teaching and learning, gained the most. For the tutor had in Richard a pupil of practised brain yet fresh, a live soul ready, for its own need and nourishment, to use every truth it came near. His penetrative habit made not a few regard him as a bore: their feeble vitality was troubled by the energy of his; he could not let a thing go in which he descried a principle: he must see it close! To the more experienced he was one who had not yet learned, wisely fearful of the trampling hoof, to carry aside his oyster with its possible pearl before he opened it. In earnest about everything, he must work out his liberty before he could gambol.

A slave will amuse himself in his dungeon; a free man must file through his chains and dig through his prison-walls before he can frolic.

Sunlight and air came through his open windows enough to keep Richard alive and strong, but not enough yet to make him merry. He was too solemn, thus, for most of those he met, but, happily, not for his tutor.

Finding Richard knew ten times as much of English literature as himself, he became in this department his pupil's pupil; and listening to his occasional utterance of a religious difficulty, had new regions of thought opened in him, to the deepening and verifying of his nature.

The result for the tutor was that he sought ordination, in the hope of giving to others what had at length become real to himself.

Richard gained little distinction at his examinations. He did well enough, but was too eager after real knowledge to care about appearing to know.

He made friends, but not many familiar friends. He sorely missed ministration: it had grown a necessity of his nature. It was well that the habit should be broken for a time. For, laden with consciousness, and not full of G.o.d, the soul will delight in itself as a benefactor, a regnant giver, the centre of thanks and obligation: and will thus, with a rampart-mound of self-satisfaction, dam out the original creative life of its being, the recognition of which is life eternal. But it grew upon Richard that, if there be a G.o.d, it is the one business of a man to find him, and that, if he would find him, he must obey the voice of his conscience.

As to the outward show of the man, Richard's carriage was improving.

Level intercourse with men of his own age but more at home in what is called society, influenced his manners both with and without his will, while, all the time, he was gathering the confidence of experience. His rowing, and the daily run to and from the boats, with other exercises prescribed by his tutor, strengthened the shoulders whose early stoop had threatened to return with much reading. He was fast growing more than presentable. With the men of his year, his character more than his faculty had influence.

Old Simon was doing his best for Arthur. He would not hear of his going back to London, or attempting anything in the way of work beyond a little in the garden. He was indeed nowise fit for more.

The blacksmith himself was making progress--the best parts of him were growing fast. Age was turning the strength into channels and mill-streams, which before, wild-foaming, had flooded the meadows.

CHAPTER LIV. _BARBARA AT HOME_.

Barbara's brother, her father's twin, was fast following her mother's to that somewhere each of us must learn for himself, no one can learn from another. While they were in London, he was in the Isle of Wight with his tutor. His mother and sister had several times gone to see him, but he did not show much pleasure in their attentions, and was certainly happier with his tutor than with any one else. Disease, however, was making straight the path of Love. Now they were all at home at Wylder Hall, and Death was on his way to join them. Love, however, was watching, ready to wrest from him his sting--without which he is no more Death, but Sleep. As the poor fellow grew weaker, his tutor became less able to console him: and he could not look to his mother for the tenderness he had seen her lavish on his brother. But the love of his sister had always leaned toward him, ready, on the least opening of the door of his heart, to show itself in the c.h.i.n.k; and at last the opportunity of being to him and doing for him what she could, arrived.

One day, on the lawn, he tripped and fell. The strong little Barbara took him in her arms, and carried him to his room. When two drops of water touch, the mere contact is not of long duration: the hearts of the sister and the dying brother rushed into each other. After this, they were seldom apart. A new life had waked in the very heart of death, and grew and spread through the being of the boy. His eye became brighter, not with fever only, but with love and content and hope; for Barbara made him feel that nothing could part them; that they had been born into the world for the hour when they should find one another--as now they had found one another, to have one another to all eternity: it was an end of their being! He would come creeping up to her as she worked or read, and sit on a stool at her feet, asking for nothing, wis.h.i.+ng for nothing, content to be near her. But then Barbara's book or work was soon banished. He was bigger than she, but the muscles of the little maiden were as springs of steel, informed with the tenderest, strongest heart in all the county, and presently he would find himself lifted to her lap, his head on her shoulder, the sweetest voice in all the world whispering loveliest secrets in his willing ear, and her face bent over him with the stoop of heaven over the patient, weary earth. In her arms his poor wasting body forgot its restlessness; the fever that irritated every nerve, burning away the dust of the world, seemed to pause and let him grow a little cool; and the sleep that sometimes came to him there was sweet as death. The face that had so long looked peevish, wore now a waiting look: in heaven, every one sheltered the other, and the arms of G.o.d were round them all!

One day the mother peeped in, and saw them seated thus. Motherhood, strong in her, though hitherto, as regarded the boy, poisoned by her strife with her husband, moved and woke at the sight of her natural place occupied by her daughter.

"Let me take him, poor fellow!" she said.

Delighted that her mother should do something for him, Barbara rose with him in her arms. The mother sat down, and Barbara laid him in her lap.

But the mother felt him lie listless and dead; no arm came creeping feebly up to encircle her neck. One of her babies died unborn, and she knew the moment the strange sad feeling of the time came back to her now; she felt through all her sensitive maternal body that her child did not care for her. Grown, through her late illness, at once weaker and tenderer, she burst into silent weeping. He looked up; the convulsion of her pain had roused him from a half-sleep. A tear dropped on his face.

"Don't rain, mamma! I will be good!" he said, and held his mouth to be kissed.

He was much too old for such baby-speech, but as he grew weaker, he had grown younger; and it seemed now as if, in his utter helplessness, he would go back to the bosom of his mother. She clasped him to her, and from that moment she and Barbara shared him between them.

So for a while, Barbara had not the same room to think about Richard; but when she did think of him, it was always in the some loving, trusting, hoping way.