There & Back Part 72

He set out, plodding across the fields, for Wylder Hall. There was no Miss Brown for him now. Miss Wylder, they told him, was in the garden.

She sat in a summer-house, reading a story. When she heard his step, she knew, from the very sound of it, that he was discomposed. Never was such a creature for interpreting the signs of the unseen! Her senses were as discriminating as those of wild animals that have not only to find life but to avoid death by the keenness of their wits. She came out, and met him in the dim green air under a wide-spreading yew.

"What is the matter, Richard?" she said, looking in his face with anxiety. "What has gone wrong?"

"My father has turned me out."

"Turned you out?"

"Yes. I must swear never to speak another word to Alice or Arthur, or go about my business. I went."

"Of course you did!" cried Barbara, lifting her dainty chin an inch higher.

Then, after a little pause, in which she looked with loving pride straight into his eyes--for was he not a man after her own brave big heart!--she resumed:

"Well, it is no worse for you than before, and ever so much better for me!--What are you going to do, Richard?--There are so many things you could turn to now!"

"Yes, but only one I can do well. I might get fellows to coach, but I should have to wait too long--and then I should have to teach what I thought worth neither the time nor the pay. I prefer to live by my hands, and earn leisure for something else."

"I like that," said Barbara. "Will it take you long to get into the way of your old work?"

"I don't think it will," answered Richard; "and I believe I shall do better at it now. I was looking at some of it yesterday morning, and was surprised I should have been pleased with it. In myself growing, I have grown to demand better work--better both in idea and execution."

"It is horrid to have you go," said Barbara; "but I will think you up to G.o.d every day, and dream about you every night, and read about you every book. I will write to you, and you will write to me--and--and"--she was on the point of crying, but would not--"and then the old smell of the leather and the paste will be so nice!"

She broke into a merry laugh, and the crisis was over. They walked together to the smithy. Fierce was the wrath of the blacksmith. But for the presence of Barbara, he would have called his son-in-law ugly names.

His anger soon subsided, however, and he laughed at himself for spending indignation on such a man.

"I might have known him by this time!" he said. "--But just let him come near the smithy!" he resumed, and his eyes began to flame again. "He shall know, if he does, what a blacksmith thinks of a baronet!--What are you going to do, my son?"

"Go back to my work."

"Never to that old-wife-trade?" cried the blacksmith. "Look here, Richard!" he said, and bared his upper arm, "there's what the anvil does!" Then he bent his shoulders, and began to wheeze. "And there's what the bookbinding does!" he continued. "No, no; you turn in with me, and we'll show them a sight!--a gentleman that can make his living with his own hands! The country shall see sir Wilton Lestrange's heir a blacksmith because he wouldn't be a sn.o.b and deny his own flesh and blood!--'I saw your son to-day, sir Wilton--at the anvil with his grandfather! What a fine fellow he do be! Lord, how he do make the sparks fly!'--If I had him, the old sinner, he should see sparks that came from somewhere else than the anvil!--You turn in with me, Richard, and do work fit for a man!"

"Grandfather," answered Richard, "I couldn't do your work so well as my own."

"Yes, you could. In six weeks you'll be a better smith than ever you'd be a bookbinder. There's no good or bad in that sort of soft thing! I'll make you a better blacksmith than myself. There! I can't say fairer!"

"But don't you think it better not to irritate my father more than I must? I oughtn't to torment him. As long as I was here he would fancy me braving him. When I am out of sight, he may think of me again and want to see me--as Job said his maker would."

"I don't remember," said Barbara. "Tell me."

"He says to G.o.d--I was reading it the other day--'I wish you would hide me in the grave till you've done being angry with me! Then you would want to see again the creature you had made; you would call me, and I would answer!' G.o.d's not like that, of course, but my father might be.

There is more chance of his getting over it, if I don't trouble him with sight or sound of me."

"Well, perhaps you're right!" said Simon. "Off with you to your woman's work! and G.o.d bless you!"

CHAPTER LXIII. _BARONET AND BLACKSMITH_.

Richard took Barbara home, and the same night started for London.

Barbara prayed him to take what money she had, but he said that by going in the third cla.s.s he would have something over, and, once there, would begin to earn money immediately.

His aunt was almost beside herself for lack of outlet to her surprise and delight at seeing him. When she heard his story, however, it was plain she took part with his father, though she was too glad to have her boy again to say so. His uncle too was sincerely glad. His work had not been the same thing to him since Richard went; and to have him again was what he had never hoped. He could not help a grudge that Richard should lose his position for the sake of such as the Mansons, but he saw now the principle involved. He saw too that, in virtue of his belief in G.o.d as the father of all, his nephew had much the stronger sense of the claim of man upon man.

Richard never disputed with his uncle; he but suggested, and kept suggesting--in the firm belief that an honest mind must, sooner or later, open its doors to every truth. He settled to his work as if he had never been away from it, and in a fortnight or so could work faster and better than before. Soon he had as much in his peculiar department as he was able to do, for almost all his old employers again sought him.

His story being now no secret, they wondered he should return to his trade, but no one thought he had chosen to be a workman because he was not a gentleman.

But how changed was the world to him since the time that looked so far away! With how much larger a life in his heart would he now sit in the orchestra while the gracious forms of music filled the hall, and he seemed to see them soaring on the pinions of the birds of G.o.d, as Dante calls the angels, or sweeping level in dance divine, like the six-winged serpents of Isaiah's vision high and lifted up--all the inters.p.a.ces filled with glow-worms and little spangled snakes of coruscating sound!

He was more blessed now than even when but to lift his eyes was to see the face of Barbara; she was in his faith and hope now as well as in his love. He had the loveliest of letters from her. She insisted he should not write oftener than once for her twice: his time was worth more, she said, than twice hers. Mr. Wingfold wrote occasionally, and Richard always answered within a week.

As soon as his son was gone, sir Wilton began to miss him. He wished, first, that the obstinacy of the rascal had not made it necessary to give him quite so sharp a lesson; he wished, next, that he had given him time to see the reasonableness of his demand; and at length, as the days and weeks pa.s.sed, and not a whisper of prayer entered the ears of the family-Baal, he began to wish that he had not sent him away. The desire to see him grew a longing; his need of him became imperative. Arthur, who now tried a little to do the work he had before declined, was the poorest subst.i.tute for Richard; and his father kept thinking how differently Richard had served him. He repented at last as much as was possible to him, and wished he had left the rascal to take his own way.

He tried to understand how it was that, anxious always to please him, he yet would not in such a trifle, and that with nothing to gain and everything to lose by his obstinacy. There might be conscience in it!

his mother certainly had a conscience! But how could the fool make the Mansons a matter of _his_ conscience? They were no business of his!

He pretended to himself that he had been born without a conscience. At the same time he knew very well there were pigeon-holes in his memory he preferred not searching in; knew very well he had done things which were wrong, things he knew to be wrong when he did them. If he had ever done a thing because he ought to do it; if he had ever abstained from doing a thing because he ought not to do it, he would have _known_ he had a conscience. Because he did not obey his conscience, he would rather believe himself without one. I doubt if consciousness ever exists without conscience, however poorly either may be developed.

Fur the first time in his life he was possessed with a good longing--namely, for his son; a fulcrum was at length established which might support leverage for his uplifting. He grew visibly greyer, stooped more, and became very irritable. Twenty times a day he would be on the point of sending for Richard, but twenty times a day his pride checked him.

"If the rascal would make but apology enough to satisfy a Frenchman, I would take him back!" he would say to himself over and over; "but he's such a chip of the old block!--so d.a.m.ned independent!--Well, I don't call it a great fault! If I had had a trade, I should have been just as independent of my father! No, I want no apology from him! Let him just say, 'Mayn't I come back, father?' and the gold ring and the wedding garment shall be out for him directly!"

A month after Richard's expulsion, the baronet drove to the smithy, and accused Simon of causing all the mischief. He must send the boy Manson away, he said: he would settle an annuity on the beggar. That done, Richard must make a suitable apology, and he would take him back. Simon listened without a word. He wanted to see how far he would go.

"If you will not oblige me," he ended, "you shall not have another stroke of work from Mortgrange, and I will use my influence to drive you from the county."

Without waiting for an answer, he turned to walk from the shop. But he did not walk. The moment he turned, Simon took him by the shoulders and ran him right out of the smithy up to his carriage, into which, for the footman had made haste to open the door, he would have tumbled him neck and heels, but that, gout and all, sir Wilton managed to spring on the step, and get in without falling. In a rage by no means unnatural, he called to the coachman to send his lash about the ruffian's ears. Simon burst into a guffaw, which so startled the horses that the footman had to run to their heads. In his haste to do so, he failed to shut the door properly; it opened and banged, swinging this way and that, as the horses now reared, now backed, now pulled, and the baronet, cursing and swearing, was tossed about in his carriage like a dried-up kernel in a nut. Simon at length, with tears of merriment running down his red cheeks, managed, in a succession of gymnastics, to close the door.

"Home, Peterkin?" he shouted, and turning away, strode back to his forge, whence immediately sprang upon the air the merriest tune ever played by anvil and hammer with a horse-shoe between them--the sparks flying about the musician like a nimbus of embodied notes. It seemed to soothe the horses, for they started immediately without further racket.

Before the next month was over, the baronet was again in the smithy--in a better mood this time. He made no reference to his former ignominious dismissal--wanted only to know if Simon had heard from his grandson. The old man answered that he had: he was well, happy, and busy. Sir Wilton gave a grunt.

"Why didn't he stay and help you?"

"I begged him to do so," answered Simon, "for he is almost as good at the anvil, and quite as good at the shoring as myself; but he said it would annoy his father to have him so near, and he wouldn't do it."

His boy's good will made the baronet fidget and swear to hide his compunction. But his evil angel got the upper hand.

"The rascal knew," he cried, "that nothing would annoy me so much as have him go back to his mire like the washed sow!"

Perceiving Simon look dangerous, he turned with a hasty good-morning, and made for his carriage, casting more than one uneasy glance over his shoulder. But the blacksmith let him depart in peace.

CHAPTER LXIV. _THE BARONET'S FUNERAL_.

It was about a year after Richard's return to his trade, when one morning the doctor at Ba.r.s.et was roused by a groom, his horse all speckled with foam, who, as soon as he had given his message, galloped to the post-office, and telegraphed for a well-known London physician. A little later, Richard received a telegram: "Father paralyzed. Will meet first train. Wingfold."

With sad heart he obeyed the summons, and found Wingfold at the station.