Kitabı oku: «There & Back», sayfa 35

CHAPTER LXV. THE PACKET

The day so often in Wingfold’s thought, arrived at last—the anniversary of the death of sir Wilton. He rose early, his mind anxious, and his heart troubled that his mind should be anxious, and set out for London by the first train. Arrived; he sought at once the office of sir Wilton’s lawyer, and when at last Mr. Bell appeared, begged him to witness the opening of the packet. Mr. Bell broke the seal himself, read the baronet’s statement of the request he had made to Wingfold, and then opened the enclosed packet.

“A most irregular proceeding!” he exclaimed—as well he might: his late client had committed to the keeping of the clergyman of another parish, the will signed and properly witnessed, which Mr. Bell had last drawn up for him, and of which, as it was nowhere discoverable, he had not doubted the destruction! Here it was, devising and bequeathing his whole property, real and personal, exclusive only of certain legacies of small account, to Richard Lestrange, formerly known as Richard Tuke, reputed son of John and Jane Tuke, born Armour, but in reality sole son of Wilton Arthur Lestrange, of Mortgrange and Cinqmer, Baronet, and Robina Armour his wife, daughter of Simon Armour, Blacksmith, born in lawful wedlock in the house of Mortgrange, in the year 18—!—and so worded, at the request of sir Wilton, that even should the law declare him supposititious, the property must yet be his!

“This will be a terrible blow to that proud woman!” said Mr. Bell. “You must prepare her for the shock!”

“Prepare lady Ann!” exclaimed Wingfold. “Believe me, she is in no danger! An earthquake would not move her.”

“I must see her lawyer at once!” said Mr. Bell, rising.

“Let me have the papers, please,” said Wingfold. “Sir Wilton did not tell me to bring them to you. I must take them to sir Richard.”

“Then you do not wish me to move in the matter?”

“I shall advise sir Richard to put the affair in your hands; but he must do it; I have not the power.”

“You are very right. I shall be here till five o’clock.”

“I hope to be with you long before that!”

It took Wingfold an hour to find Richard. He heard the news without a word, but his eyes flashed, and Wingfold knew he thought of Barbara and his mother and the Mansons. Then his face clouded.

“It will bring trouble on the rest of my father’s family!” he said.

“Not upon all of them,” returned Wingfold; “and you have it in your power to temper the trouble. But I beg you will not be hastily generous, and do what you may regret, finding it for the good of none.”

“I will think well before I do anything,” answered Richard. “But there may be another will yet!”

“Of course there may! No one can tell. In the meantime we must be guided by appearances. Come with me to Mr. Bell.”

“I must see my mother first.”

He found her ironing a shirt for him, and told her the news. She received them quietly. So many changes had got both her and Richard into a sober way of expecting. They went to Mr. Bell, and Richard begged him to do what he judged necessary. Mr. Bell at once communicated with lady Ann’s lawyer, and requested him to inform her ladyship that sir Richard would call upon her the next day. Mr. Wingfold accompanied him to Mortgrange. Lady Ann received them with perfect coolness.

“You are, I trust, aware of the cause of my visit, lady Ann?” said Richard.

“I am.”

“May I ask what you propose to do?”

“That, excuse me, is my affair. It lies with me to ask you what provision you intend making for sir Wilton’s family.”

“Allow me, lady Ann, to take the lesson you have given me, and answer, that is my affair.”

She saw she had made a mistake.

“For my part,” she returned, “I should not object to remaining in the house, were I but assured that my daughters should be in no danger of meeting improper persons.”

“It would be no pleasure, lady Ann, to either of us to be so near the other. Our ways of thinking are too much opposed. I venture to suggest that you should occupy your jointure-house.”

“I will do as I see fit.”

“You must find another home.” Lady Ann left the room, and the next week the house, betaking herself to her own, which was not far off, in the park at Cinqmer, the smaller of the two estates.

The week following, Richard went to see Arthur.

“Now, Arthur!” he said, “let us be frank with each other! I am not your enemy. I am bound to do the best I can for you all.”

“When you thought the land was yours, I had a trade to fall back upon. Now that the land proves mine, you have no trade, or other means of making a livelihood. If you will be a brother, you will accept what I offer: I will make over to you for your life-time, but without power to devise it, this estate of Cinqmer, burdened with the payment of five hundred a year to your sister Theodora till her marriage.”

Arthur was glad of the gift, yet did not accept it graciously. The disposition is no rare one that not only gives grudgingly, but receives grudgingly. The man imagines he shields his independence by not seeming pleased. To show yourself pleased is to confess obligation! Do not manifest pleasure, do not acknowledge favour, and you keep your freedom like a man!

“I cannot see,” said Arthur, “—of course it is very kind of you, and all that! you wouldn’t have compliments bandied between brothers!—but I should like to know why the land should not be mine to leave. I might have children, you know!”

“And I might have more children!” laughed Richard. “But that has nothing to do with it. The thing is this: the land itself I could give out and out, but the land has the people. God did not give us the land for our own sakes only, but for theirs too. The men and women upon it are my brothers and sisters, and I have to see to them. Now I know that you are liked by our people, and that you have claims to be liked by them, and therefore believe you will consider them as well as yourself or the land—though at the same time I shall protect them with the terms of the deed. But suppose at your death it should go to Percy! Should I not then feel that I had betrayed my people, a very Judas of landlords? Never fellow-creature of mine will I put in the danger of a scoundrel like him!”

“He is my brother!”

“And mine. I know him; I was at Oxford with him! Not one foothold shall he ever have on land of mine! When he wants to work, let him come to me—not till then!”

“You will not say that to my mother!”

“I will say nothing to your mother.—Do you accept my offer?”

“I will think over it.”

“Do,” said Richard, and turned to go.

“Will you not settle something on Victoria?” said Arthur.

“We shall see what she turns out by the time she is of age! I don’t want to waste money!”

“What do you mean by wasting money?”

“Giving it where it will do no good.”

“God gives to the bad as well as the good?”

“It is one thing to give to the bad, and another to give where it will do no good. God knows the endless result; I should know but the first link of its chain. I must act by the knowledge granted me. God may give money in punishment: should I dare do that?”

“Well, you’re quite beyond me!”

“Never mind, then. What you and I have to do is to be friends, and work together. You will find I mean well!”

“I believe you do, Richard; but we don’t somehow seem to be in the same world.”

“If we are true, that will not keep us apart. If we both work for the good of the people, we must come together.”

“To tell you the truth, Richard, knowing you had given me the land, I could not put up with interference. I am afraid we should quarrel, and then I should seem ungrateful.”

“What would you say to our managing the estates together for a year or two? Would not that be the way to understand each other?”

“Perhaps. I must think about it.”

“That is right. Only don’t let us begin with suspicion. You did me more than one kindness not knowing I was your brother! And you sent back Miss Brown.”

“That was mere honesty.”

“Strictly considered, it was more. My father had a right to take the mare from me, and at his death she came into your possession. I thank you for sending her to Barbara.”

Arthur turned away.

“My dear fellow,” said Richard, “Barbara loved me when I was a bookbinder, and promised to marry me thinking me base-born. I am sorry, but there is no blame to either of us. I had my bad time then, and your good time is, I trust, coming. I did nothing to bring about the change. I did think once whether I had not better leave all to you, and keep to my trade; but I saw that I had no right to do so, because duties attended the property which I was better able for than you.”

“I believe every word you say, Richard! You are nobler than I.”

CHAPTER LXVI. BARBARA’S DREAM

Mr. Wylder could not well object to sir Richard Lestrange on the ground that his daughter had loved him before she or her father knew his position the same he was coveting for her; and within two months they were married. Lady Ann was invited but did not go to the wedding; Arthur, Theodora, and Victoria did; Percy was not invited.

Neither bride nor bridegroom seeing any sense in setting out on a journey the moment they were free to be at home together, they went straight from the church to Mortgrange.

When they entered the hall which had so moved Richard’s admiration the first time he saw it, he stood for a moment lost in thought. When he came to himself, Barbara had left him; but ere he had time to wonder, such a burst of organ music filled the place as might have welcomed one that had overcome the world. He stood entranced for a minute, then hastened to the gallery, where he found Barbara at the instrument.

“What!” he cried in astonishment; “you, Barbara! you play like that!”

“I wanted to be worth something to you, Richard.”

“Oh Barbara, you are a queen at giving! I was well named, for you were coming! I am Richard indeed!—oh, so rich!”

In the evening they went out into the park. The moon was rising. The sunlight was not quite gone. Her light mingled with the light that gave it her. “Do you know that lovely passage in the Book of Baruch?” asked Richard.

“What book is that?” returned Barbara. “It can’t be in the Bible, surely?”

“It is in the Apocrypha—which is to me very much in the Bible! I think I can repeat it. I haven’t a good memory, but some things stick fast.”

But in the process of recalling it, Richard’s thoughts wandered, and Baruch was forgotten.

“This dying of Apollo in the arms of Luna,” he said, “this melting of the radiant god into his own pale shadow, always reminds me of the poverty-stricken, wasted and sad, yet lovely Elysium of the pagans: so little consolation did they gather from the thought of it, that they longed to lay their bodies, not in the deep, cool, far-off shadow of grove or cave, but by the ringing roadside, where live feet, in two meeting, mingling, parting tides, ever came and went; where chariots rushed past in hot haste, or moved stately by in jubilant procession; where at night lonely forms would steal through the city of the silent, with but the moon to see them go, bent on ghastly conference with witch or enchanter; and—”

“Where are you going, Richard? Please take me with you. I feel as if I were lost in a wood!”

“What I meant to say,” replied Richard, with a little laugh, “was—how different the moonlit shadow-land of those people from the sunny realm of the radiant Christ! Jesus rose again because he was true, and death had no part in him. This world’s day is but the moonlight of his world. The shadow-man, who knows neither whence he came nor whither he is going, calls the upper world the house of the dead, being himself a ghost that wanders in its caves, and knows neither the blowing of its wind, the dashing of its waters, the shining of its sun, nor the glad laughter of its inhabitants.”

They wandered along, now talking, now silent, their two hearts lying together in a great peace.

The moon kept rising and brightening, slowly victorious over the pallid light of the dead sun; till at last she lifted herself out of the vaporous horizon-sea, ascended over the tree-tops, and went walking through the unobstructed sky, mistress of the air, queen of the heavens, lady of the eyes of men. Yet was she lady only because she beheld her lord. She saw the light of her light, and told what she saw of him.

“When the soul of man sees God, it shines!” said Richard. They reached at length the spot where first they met in the moonlight. With one heart they stopped and turned, and looked each in the other’s moonlit eyes. Barbara spoke first.

“Now,” she said, “tell me what Baruch says.”

“Ah, yes, Baruch! He was the prophet Jeremiah’s friend and amanuensis. It was the moon made me think of him. I believe I can give you the passage word for word, as it stands in the English Bible.

“‘But he that knoweth all things knoweth her,’—that is, Wisdom—‘and hath found her out with his understanding: he that prepared the earth for evermore hath filled it with four-footed beasts: he that sendeth forth light, and it goeth, calleth it again, and it obeyeth him with fear. The stars shined in their watches, and rejoiced: when he calleth them, they say, Here we be; and so with cheerfulness they showed light unto him that made them. This is our God, and there shall none other be accounted of in comparison of him.’”

“That is beautiful!” cried Barbara. “‘They said, Here we be! And so—’—What is it?”

“‘And so with cheerfulness they showed light unto him that made them.’”

“I will read every word of Baruch!” said Barbara. “Is there much of him?”

“No; very little.”

A silence followed. Then again Barbara spoke, and she clung a little closer to her husband.

“I want to tell you something that came to me one night when we were in London,” she said. “It was a miserable time that—before I found you up in the orchestra there! and then hell became purgatory, for there was hope in it. I saw so many miserable things! I seemed always to come upon the miserable things. It was as if my eyes were made only to see miserable things—bad things and suffering everywhere. The terrible city was full of them. I longed to help, but had to wait for you to set me free. You had gone from my knowledge, and I was very sad, seeing nothing around me but a waste of dreariness. I kept asking God to give me patience, and not let me fancy myself alone. But the days were dismal, and the balls and dinners frightful. I seemed in a world without air. The girls were so silly, the men so inane, and the things they said so mawkish and colourless! Their compliments sickened me so, that I was just hungry to hide myself. But at last came what I want to tell you.

“One morning, after what seemed a long night’s dreamless sleep, I awoke; but it was much too early to rise; so I lay thinking—or more truly, I hope, being thought into, as Mr. Wingfold says. Many of the most beautiful things I had read, scenes of our Lord’s life on earth, and thoughts of the Father, came and went. I had no desire to sleep again, or any feeling of drowsiness; but in the midst of fully conscious thought, found myself in some other place, of which I only knew that there was firm ground under my feet, and a soft white radiance of light about me. The remembrance came to me afterwards, of branches of trees spreading high overhead, through which I saw the sky: but at the time I seemed not to take notice of what was around me. I was leaning against a form tall and grand, clothed from the shoulders to the ground in a black robe, full, and soft, and fine. It lay in thickly gathered folds, touched to whiteness in the radiant light, all along the arms encircling, without at first touching me.

“With sweet content my eyes went in and out of those manifold radiant lines, feeling, though they were but parts of his dress, yet they were of himself; for I knew the form to be that of the heavenly Father, but felt no trembling fear, no sense of painful awe—only a deep, deep worshipping, an unutterable love and confidence. ‘Oh Father!’ I said, not aloud, but low into the folds of his garment. Scarcely had I breathed the words, when ‘My child!’ came whispered, and I knew his head was bent toward me, and I felt his arms close round my shoulders, and the folds of his garment enwrap me, and with a soft sweep, fall behind me to the ground. Delight held me still for a while, and then I looked up to seek his face; but I could not see past his breast. His shoulders rose far above my upreaching hands. I clasped them together, and face and hands rested near his heart, for my head came not much above his waist.

“And now came the most wonderful part of my dream. As I thus rested against his heart, I seemed to see into it; and mine was filled with loving wonder, and an utterly blessed feeling of home, to the very core. I was at home—with my Father! I looked, as it seemed, into a space illimitable and fathomless, and yet a warm light as from a hearth-fire shone and played in ruddy glow, as upon confining walls. And I saw, there gathered, all human hearts. I saw them—yet I saw no forms; they were there—and yet they would be there. To my waking reason, the words sound like nonsense, and perplex me; but the thing did not perplex me at all. With light beyond that of faith, for it was of absolute certainty, clear as bodily vision, but of a different nature, I saw them. But this part of my dream, the most lovely of all, I can find no words to describe; nor can I even recall to my own mind the half of what I felt. I only know that something was given me then, some spiritual apprehension, to be again withdrawn, but to be given to us all, I believe, some day, out of his infinite love, and withdrawn no more. Every heart that had ever ached, or longed, or wandered, I knew was there, folded warm and soft, safe and glad. And it seemed in my dream that to know this was the crown of all my bliss—yes, even more than to be myself in my Father’s arms. Awake, the thought of multitude had always oppressed my mind; it did not then. From the comfort and joy it gave me to see them there, I seemed then first to know how my own heart had ached for them.

“Then tears began to run from my eyes—but easily, with no pain of the world in them. They flowed like a gentle stream—into the heart of God, whose depths were open to my gaze. The blessedness of those tears was beyond words. It was all true then! That heart was our home!

“Then I felt that I was being gently, oh, so gently, put away. The folds of his robe which I held in my hands, were being slowly drawn from them; and the gladness of my weeping changed to longing entreaty. ‘Oh Father! Father!’ I cried; but I saw only his grand gracious form, all blurred and indistinct through the veil of my blinding tears, slowly receding, slowly fading—and I awoke.

“My tears were flowing now with the old earth-pain in them, with keenest disappointment and longing. To have been there and to have come back, was the misery. But it did not last long. The glad thought awoke that I had the dream—a precious thing never to be lost while memory lasted; a thing which nothing but its realization could ever equal in preciousness. I rose glad and strong, to serve with newer love, with quicker hand and readier foot, the hearts around me.”