"It's very good of you, Richard!" he said. "I suppose you know all about it!"

"I don't. What is it? Anything new?"

"No, nothing! It's all so miserable!"

"It's not all miserable," answered Richard, "so long as we are brothers!"

The tears came in Arthur's eyes. Their mother had repented telling them the truth about Richard, and pretended to have discovered that, while sir Wilton was indeed Richard's father, Mrs. Tuke was after all his mother.

"Yes, that is good," he said, "though it be only in misfortune! But I am a wretched creature, and no good to anybody; you are a strong man, Richard; I shall never be worth calling your brother!"

"You can do one great thing for me."

"What is that?"

"Live and grow well."

"I wish I could; but that is just what I can't do. I'm on my way home."

"I would gladly go with you!"

"Why?"

Richard made no answer, and silence followed. Arthur got up.

"Ally will be home," he said, "and thinking me too ill to get along!"

"Let's go then!" said Richard.

When they entered Everilda street, they saw Alice on the door-step, looking anxiously up and down. The moment she caught sight of them, she ran away along the street. Richard would have followed her, but Arthur held him, and said,

"Never mind her to-night, Richard! She don't know that you know. I will tell her; and when you come again, you will find her different. Go now, and come as soon as you can—at least, I mean, as soon as you like."

"I will come to-morrow," answered Richard. "Do you want me to go now?"

"It would be better for Alice. I will go to the end of the street, and she will see me from where she is hiding, and come. She always does."

"Is she in the way of hiding then?"

"Yes, when my mother is—"

"Well, good-bye!" said Richard. "But where shall I find you to-morrow!"

They arranged their meeting, and parted.

The next day, they found a better place for their meal. Richard thought it better not to go quite home with Arthur, but, having learned from him where Alice worked, and at what hour she left, went the following night to wait for her not far from the shop.

At last she came along, looking very thin and pale, but she shone up when she saw him, and joined him without the least hesitation.

"How do you think Arthur is?" he asked.

"I've not seen him so well for ever so long," she answered. "But that is not saying much!" she added with a sigh.

They walked along together. With a taste of happiness, say once a week, Alice would have been a merry girl. She was so content to be with Richard that she never heeded where he was taking her. But when she found him going into a shop with a ham in the window, she drew back.

"No, Richard," she said; "I can't let you feed me and Arthur too! Indeed I can't! It would be downright robbery!"

"Nonsense!" returned Richard; "I want some supper, and you must keep me company!"

"You must excuse me!" she insisted. "It's all right for Arthur: he's ill; but for me, I couldn't look myself in the face in the glass if I let you feed me—a strong girl, fit for anything!"

"Now look here!" said Richard; "I must come to the point, and you must be reasonable! Ain't you my sister?—and don't I know you haven't enough to eat?"

"Who told you that?"

"No one. Any fool could see it with half an eye!"

"Artie has been telling tales!"

"Not one! Just listen to me. I earn so much a week now, and after paying for everything, have something over to spend as I please. If you refuse me for a brother, say so, and I will leave you alone: why should a man tear his heart out looking on where he can't help!"

She stood motionless, and made him no answer.

"Look here!" he said; "there is the money for our supper: if you will not go with me and eat it, I will throw it in the street."

With her ingrained feeling of the preciousness of money Alice did not believe him.

"Oh, no, Richard! you would never do that!" she said.

The same instant the coins rang faintly from the middle of the street, and a cab passed over them. Alice gave a cry as of bodily pain, and started to pick them up. Richard held her fast.

"It's your supper, Richard!" she almost shrieked, and struggled to get away after the money.

"Yes," he answered; "and yours goes after it, except you come in and share it with me!"

As he spoke he showed her his hand with shillings in it.

She turned and entered the shop. Richard ordered a good meal.

Alice stopped in the middle of her supper, laid down her knife and fork, and burst out crying.

"What is the matter?" said Richard, alarmed.

"I can't bear to think of that money! I must go and look for it!" sobbed Alice.

Richard laughed, the first time for days.

"Alice," he said, "the money was well spent: I got my own way with it!"

As she ate and drank, a little colour rose in her face, and on Richard fell a shadow of the joy of his creator, beholding his work, and seeing it good.



CHAPTER XLIV.

A DOOR OPENED IN HEAVEN.

Some men hunt their fellows to prey upon them, and fill their own greedy maws; Richard hunted and caught his brother and sister that he might feed them with the labour of his hands. I fear there was therefore a little more for the mother to guzzle, but it is of small consequence whether those that go down the hill arrive at the foot a week sooner or later. To Arthur and Alice, their new-found brother, strong and loving, was as an angel from high heaven. It was no fault in Richard that he did not find a correspondent comfort in them. It did in truth comfort him to see them improve in looks and in strength; but they had not many thoughts to share with him—had little coin for spiritual commerce. Even their religion, like that of most who claim any, had little shape or colour. What there was of it was genuine, which made it infinitely precious, but it was much too weak to pass over to the help of another. Divine aid, however, of a different sort, was waiting for him.

Hitherto he had heard little or no music. The little was from the church-organ, and his not unjustifiable prejudice against its surroundings, had disinclined him to listen when it spoke. The intellect of the youth had come to the front, and the higher powers to which art is ministrant, had remained much undeveloped, shut in darkened palace-rooms, where a ray of genial impulse not often entered. For the highest of those powers, the imagination, without which no discovery of any grandeur is made even in the realms of science, dwells in the halls of aspiration, outlook, desire, and hope, and round the windows and filling the air of these, hung the dry dust-cloud of Richard's negation. But when Love, with her attendant Sorrow, came, they opened wide all the doors and windows of them to what might enter. Hitherto all his poetry, even what he produced, had come to Richard at second-hand, that is, from the inspiration of books; its flowers were of the moon, not of the sun; they sprang under the pale reflex light of other souls: for genuine life of any and every sort, the immediate inspiration of the Almighty is the one essential, and for that, Sorrow and Love now made a way.

First of all, the lower winds and sidelong rays of art, all from the father of lights, crept in, able now to work for his perfect will. For when a man has once begun to live, then have the thoughts and feelings of other men, and every art in which those thoughts or feelings are embodied by them, a sevenfold power for the strengthening and rousing of the divine nature in him. And as the divine nature is roused, the diviner nature, the immediate God, enters to possess it.

A gentleman who employed Richard, happened one day, in conversation with him as he pursued his work, to start the subject of music, and made a remark which, notwithstanding Richard's ignorance, found sufficient way into his mind to make him think over what little experience he had had of sweet sounds, ere he made his reply. When made, it revealed in truth his ignorance, but his modesty as well, and his capacity for understanding—with the result that the gentleman, who was not only a lover of music but a believer in it, said to him in return things which roused in him such a desire to put them to the test for verification or disapproval, that he went the next Monday night to the popular concert at St. James's Hall. In the crowd that waited more than an hour at the door of the orchestra to secure a shilling-place, there was not one that knew so little of music as he; but there never had been in it one whose ignorance was more worthy of destruction. The first throbbing flash of the violins cleft his soul as lightning cleaves a dark cloud, and set his body shivering as with its thunder—and lo, a door was opened in heaven! and, like the writhings of a cloud in the grasp of a heavenly wind, all the discords of spirit-pain were breaking up, changing, and solving themselves into the song of the violins! After that, he went every Monday night to the same concert-room. It was his church, the mount of his ascension, the place whence he soared—no, but was lifted up to what was as yet his highest consciousness of being. All that was best and simplest in him came wide awake as he sat and listened. What fact did the music prove? None whatever. Yet would not the logic of all science have persuaded Richard that the sea of mood and mystic response, tossing his soul hither and thither on its radiant waters, as, deep unto deep, it answered the marching array of live waves, fashioned one by one out of the still air, marshalled and ranked and driven on in symmetric relation and order by those strange creative powers with their curious symbols, throned at their godlike labour—that the answer of his soul, I say, was but an illusion, the babble of a sleeping child in reply to a question never put. If it was an illusion, how came it that such illusion was possible? If an illusion, whence its peculiar bliss—a bliss aroused by law imperative that ruled its factors, yet bore scant resemblance to the bliss? What he felt, he knew that he felt, and knew that be had never caused it, never commanded its presence, never foreseen its arrival, never known of its possible existence. The feeling was in him, but had been waked by some power beyond him, for he was not himself even present at its origin! The voice of that power was a voice all sweetness and persuading, yet a voice of creation, calling up a world of splendour and delight, the beams of whose chambers were indeed laid upon the waters, but had there a foundation the less lively earth could not afford. For the very essence of the creative voice, working wildest delirium of content, was law that could not be broken, the very law of the thought of God himself. Law is life, for God is law, and God is life. Law is the root and the stalk of life, beauty is the flower of life, and joy is its odour; but life itself is love. The flower and its odour are given unto men; the root and stalk they may search into if they will; the giver of life they must know, or they cannot live with his life, they cannot share in the life eternal.

One night, after many another such, he sat entranced, listening to the song of a violin, alone and perfect, soaring and sailing the empyrean unconvoyed,—and Barbara in his heart was listening with him. He had given up hope of seeing her again in this world, but not all hope of seeing her again somewhere; and her image had not grown less dear, I should rather say less precious to him. The song, like a heavenly lark, folded its wings while yet high in the air, and ceased: its nest was somewhere up in the blue. Should I say rather that one after one the singing birds flitted from the strings, those telegraph wires betwixt the seen and the unseen, and now the last lingerer was gone? All was over, and the world was still. But the face of Barbara kept shining from the depths of Richard's soul, as if she stood behind him, and her face looked up reflected from its ethereal ocean.

All at once he was aware that his bodily eyes were resting on the bodily face of Barbara. It was as if his strong imagining of her had made her be. His heart gave a great bound—and stood still, as if for eternity. But the blood surged back to his brain, and he knew that together they had been listening to the same enchanting spell, had been aloft together in the same aether of delight: heaven is high and deep, and its lower air is music; in the upper regions the music may pass, who knows, merging unlost, into something endlessly better! He had felt, without knowing it, the power of her presence; it had been ruling his thoughts! He gazed and gazed, never taking his eyes from her but for the joy of seeing her afresh, for the comfort of their return to their home. She was so far off that he could gaze at will, and thus was distance a blessing. Not seldom does removal bring the parted nearer. It is not death alone that makes "far-distant images draw nigh," but distance itself is an angel of God, mediating the propinquity of souls. As he gazed he became aware that she saw him, and that she knew that he saw her. How he knew it he could not have told. There was no change on her face, no sign of recognition, but he knew that she saw and knew. In his modesty he neither perceived nor imagined more. His heart received no thrill from the pleasure that throbbed in the heart of the lovely lady at sight of the poor sorrowful workman; neither did she in her modesty perceive on what a throne of gems she sat in his heart. She saw that his cheek was pale and thin, and that his eyes were larger and brighter; she little thought how the fierce sun of agony had ripened his soul since they parted.

For the rest of the concert, the music had sunk to a soft delight, and took the second place; the delight of seeing dulled his delight in hearing. All the rainbow claspings and weavings of strange accords, all the wing-wafts of out-dreaming melody, seemed to him to come flickering and floating from one creative centre—the face, and specially the eyes of Barbara; yet the music and Barbara seemed one. The form of it that entered by his eyes met that which entered by his ears, and they were one ere he noted a difference. Barbara was the music, and the music was Barbara. He saw her with his ears; he heard her with his eyes. But as the last sonata sank to its death, suddenly the face and the tones parted company, and he knew that his eyes and her face must part next, and the same moment her face was already far away. She had left him; she was looking for her fan, and preparing to go.

He was not far from the door. He hurried softly out, plunged into the open air as into a great cool river, went round the house, and took his stand at one of the doors, where he waited like one watching the flow of a river of gravel for the shine of a diamond. But the flow sank to threads and drops, and the diamond never shone.

He walked home, nevertheless, as if he had seen an end of sorrow: how much had been given him that night, for ever to have and to hold! Such an hour went far to redeem the hateful thing, life! A much worse world would be more than endurable, with its black and gray once or twice in a century crossed by such a band of gold! Who would not plunge through ages of vapour for one flash of such a star! Who would not dig to the centre for one glimpse of a gem of such exhaustless fire! "But, alas, how many for whom no golden threads are woven into the web of life!" he said to himself as he thought of Alice and Arthur—but straightway answered himself, saying, "Who dares assert it? The secret of a man's life is with himself; who can speak for another!" He had himself been miserable, and was now content—oh, how much more than content—that he had been miserable! He was even strong to be miserable again! What might not fall to the lot of the rest, every one of them, ere God, if there were a God, had done with them! Who invented music? Some one must have made the delight of it possible! With his own share in its joy he had had nothing to do! Was Chance its grand inventor, its great ingenieur? Why or how should Chance love loveliness that was not, and make it be, that others might love it? Could it be a deaf God, or a being that did not care and would not listen, that invented music? No; music did not come of itself, neither could the source of it be devoid of music!



CHAPTER XLV.

THE CARRIAGE.

Before the next Monday, he had learned the outlets of the hall, and the relations of its divisions to its doors. But he fared no better, for whether again he mistook the door or not, he did not see Barbara come out. He had been with her, however, through all the concert; there was reason to hope she would be often present, and every time there would be a chance of his getting near her! The following Monday, nevertheless, she was not in the house: had she been, he said to himself, his eyes would of themselves have found her.

A fortnight passed, and Richard had not again seen Barbara. He began to think she must have gone home. A gentleman was with her the first night, whom he took for her father; the second, Arthur Lestrange was by her side: neither of them had he seen since.

Then the thought suggested itself that she might have come to London to prepare for her marriage with Mr. Lestrange. She must of course be married some day! He had always taken that for granted, but now, for the first time somehow, the thought came near enough to burn. He did not attempt to analyze his feelings; he was too miserable to care for his feelings. The thought was as terrible as if it had been quite new. It was not a live thought before; now it was alive and until now he had not known misery. That Barbara should die, seemed nothing beside it! Death was no evil! Whether there was a world beyond it or not, it was the one friend of the race! In death at last, outworn, tortured humanity would find repose!—or if not, what followed could not, at worst, be worse than what went before! It must be better, for the one misery of miseries would be to live in the same world with Barbara married: She was out of sight of him, far as princess or queen—or angel, if there were such a being; but the thought that she should marry a common, outside man, who knew no more what things were precious than the lowest fellow in the slums, was a pain he could neither stifle nor endure. Could a woman like Barbara for an instant entertain the notion? If she loved a man worthy of her, then—he thought, as so many have for a moment thought—he could bear the torture of it! But for such patience in prospect men are generally indebted to the fact that the man is not likely to appear, or, at least, has not yet come in sight. In vain he persuaded himself that Barbara would no more listen to such a suitor, than a man could ever show himself on the level of her love. That Barbara would marry Lestrange grew more and more likely as he regarded the idea. Mortgrange and Wylder Hall were conveniently near, and he had heard his grandfather suppose that Barbara must one day inherit the latter! The thought was a growing torment. His heart sank into a draw-well of misery, out of which the rope of thinking could draw up nothing but suicide. But as often as the bucket rose thus laden, Richard cast its content from him. It was cowardly to hide one's head in the sand of death. So long as he was able to stand, why should he lie down? If a morrow was on the way, why not see what the morrow would bring? why not look the apparition in the face, though for him it brought no dawn!

Once more the loud complaint against life awoke and raged. What an evil, what a wrong was life! Who had dared force the thing upon him? What being, potent in ill, had presumed to call him from the blessed regions of negation, the solemn quiet of being and knowing nothing, and compel him to live without, nay against his will, in misery such as only an imagination keen to look upon suffering, could have embodied or even invented? Alas, there was no help! If he lifted his hand against the life he hated, he might but rush into a region of torture more exquisite! For might not the life-compelling tyrant, offended that he should desire to cease, fix him in eternal beholding of his love and his hate folded in one—to sicken, yet never faint, in aeonian pain, such as life essential only could feel! He rebelled against the highest as if the highest were the lowest—as if the power that could create a heart for bliss, might gloat on its sufferings.

Again and again he would take the side of God against himself: but always there was the undeniable, the inexplicable misery! Whence came it? It could not come from himself, for he hated it? and if God did not cause, yet he could prevent it! Then he remembered how blessed he had been but a few days before; how ready to justify God; how willing to believe he had reason in all he did: alas for his nature, for his humanity! clothed in his own joy, he was generous to trust God with the bliss of others; the cold blast of the world once again swept over him, and he stood complaining against him more bitterly than ever.

It is a notable argument, surely, against the existence of God, that they who believe in him, believe in him so wretchedly! So many carry themselves to him like peevish children! Richard half believed in God, only to complain of him altogether! Were it not better to deny him altogether, saying that such things being, he cannot be, than to murmur and rebel as against one high and hard?

But I bethink me: is it not better to complain if one but complain to God himself? Does he not then draw nigh to God with what truth is in him? And will he not then fare as Job, to whom God drew nigh in return, and set his heart at rest?

For him who complains and comes not near, who shall plead?—The Son of the Father, saying, "They know not what they do."

He began to wonder whether even an all-mighty and all-good God would be able to contrive such a world as no somebody in it would ever complain of. What if he had plans too large for the vision of men to take in, and they were uncomfortable to their own blame, because, not seeing them, they would trust him for nothing? He knew unworthy men full of complaint against an economy that would not let them live like demons, and be blessed as seraphs! Why should not a man at least wait and see what the possible being was about to do with him, perhaps for him, before he accused or denied him? At worst he would be no worse for the waiting!

His thinking was stopped by a sudden flood of self-contempt. Was Barbara to live alone that he might think of her in peace! He was a selfish, disgraceful, degraded animal, deserving all he suffered, and ten times more! What did it matter whether he was happy or not, if it was well with her! Was he a man, and could he not endure! Here was a possible nobility! here a whole world wherein to be divine! A man was free to sacrifice his happiness: for him, he had nothing but his crowned sorrow; he would sacrifice that! Had anyone ever sacrificed his sorrow to his love? Would it not be a new and strange sacrifice? To know that he suffered would make her a little unhappy: for her sake he would not be unhappy! He would at least for her sake fight with his grief; he would live to love her still, if never more to look on her face. In after eternal years, if ever once more they met, he would tell her how for her sake he had lived in peace, and neither died nor gone mad! Yea, for her sake, he would still seek her God, if haply he might find him! Was there not a possible hope that he would justify to him, even in his heart, his ways with men, and his ways with himself among his fellows? What if there was a way so much higher than ours, as to include all the seeming right and seeming wrong in one radiance of righteousness! The idea was scarce conceivable; it was not one he could illustrate to himself; but, as a thought transcending flesh and blood, better and truer than what we are able to think of as truth, he would try to hold by it! Things that we are right in thinking bad, must be bad to God as well as to us; but may there not be things so far above us, that we cannot take them in, and they seem bad because they are so far above us in goodness that we see them partially and untruly? There must be room in his wisdom for us to mistake! He would try to trust! He would say, "If thou art my father, be my father, and comfort thy child. Perhaps thou hast some way! Perhaps things are not as thou wouldst have them, and thou art doing what can be done to set them right! If thou art indeed true to thy own, it were hard not to be believed—hard that one of thine own should not trust thee, should not give thee time to make things clear, should behave to thee as if thou wouldst not explain, when it is that we are unable to understand!"

He was thinking with himself thus, as he walked home, late one Monday night, from the concert, to which had come none of the singing birds of his own forests to meet and make merry with the song-birds of the violins. Like a chaos of music without form and void, the sweet sounds had stormed and billowed against him, and he had left the door of his late paradise hardly in better mood than if it had been the church of the Rev. Theodore Gosport, who for the traditions of men made the word of God of small effect!

He was walking westward, with his eyes on the ground, along the broad pavement on the house-side of Piccadilly, lost half in misery, half in thought, when he was stopped by a little crowd about an awning that stretched across the footway. The same instant rose a murmur of admiration, and down the steps from the door came tripping, the very Allegra of motion, the same Barbara to whose mould his being seemed to have shaped itself. He stood silent as death, but something made her cast a look on him, and she saw the large eyes of his suffering fixed on her. She gave a short musical cry, and turning darted through the crowd, leaving her escort at the foot of the steps.

"Richard!" she cried, and catching hold of his hand, laid her other hand on his shoulder—then suddenly became aware of the gazing faces, not all pleasant to look upon, that came crowding closer about them.

She pulled him toward a brougham that stood at the curbstone.

"Jump in," she whispered. Then turning to the gentleman, who in a bewildered way fancied she had caught a prodigal brother in the crowd, "Good-night, Mr. Cleveland," she said: "thank you!"

One moment Richard hesitated; but he saw that neither place nor time allowed anything but obedience, and when she turned again, he was already seated.

"Home!" she said to the coachman as she got in, for she had no attendant.

"I must talk fast," she began, "and so must you; we have not far to go together.—Why did you not write to me?"

"I did write."

"Did you!" exclaimed Barbara.

"I did indeed."

"Then what could you think of me?"

"I thought nothing you would not like me to think. I was sure there was an explanation!"

"That of course! You knew that!—But how ill you look!"

"It is from not seeing you any more at the concerts," answered Richard.

"Tell me your address, and I will write to you. But do not write to me. When shall you be at the hall again?"

"Next Monday. I am there every Monday."

"I shall be there, and will take your answer from your hand in the crush as I come out by the Regent-street door."

She pulled the coachman's string.

"Now you must go," she said. "Thank God I have seen you! Tell me when you write if you know anything of Alice."

She gave him her hand. He got out, closed the door, took off his hat, and stood for minutes uncovered in the cold clear night, hardly sure whether he had indeed been side by side with Barbara, or in a heavenly trance.



CHAPTER XLVI.

RICHARD'S DILEMMA.

He turned and walked home—but with a heart how different! The world was folded in winter and night, but in his heart the sun was shining, and it made a wonder and a warmth at the heart of every crystal of the frost that spangled and feathered and jewel-crusted rail and tree! The misty moon was dreaming of spring, and almond blossoms, and nightingales.—But did Barbara know about him? Had Alice told the terrible secret! If she knew, and did not withdraw her friendship, he could bear anything—almost anything! But he would be happy now, would keep happy as long as he could, and try to be happy when he could not! She was with him all the way home. Every step was a delight. Foot lingered behind foot as he came; now each was eager to pass the other.

He slept a happy sleep, and in the morning was better than for many a day—so much better that his mother, who had been watching him with uneasiness, and wondering whether she ought not to bring matters to a crisis, began to feel at rest about him. She had not a suspicion of what now troubled him the most! A little knowledge is not, but the largest half-knowledge is a dangerous thing! He knew who was his father, but he did not know who was not his mother; and from this half-knowledge rose the thickest of the cloud that yet overshadowed him. He had been proud that he came of such good people as his father and mother, but it was not the notion of shame to himself that greatly troubled him; it was the new feeling about his mother. He did not think of her as one to be blamed, but as one too trusting, and so deceived; he never felt unready to stand up for her. What troubled him was that she must always know that unspoken-of something between her and her son, that his mother must feel shame before him. He could not bear to think of it. If only she would say something to him, that he might tell her she was his own precious mother, whatever had befallen her! that for her sake he could spurn the father that begot him! Already had come this good of Mrs. Manson's lie, that Richard felt far more the goodness of his mother to him, and loved her the better that he believed himself her shame. It is true that his love increased upon a false idea, but the growth gained by his character could not be lost, and so his love would not grow less—for no love, that is loved, gave God's, can clothe warm enough the being around whom it gathers. And when he learned the facts of the story, he would not find that he had given his aunt more love than she deserved at his heart.

As soon as the next day's work was over, Richard sat down to write to Barbara. But he had no sooner taken the pen in his fingers, than he became doubtful: what was he to say? He could not open his heart about any of the things that troubled him most! Putting aside the recurrent dread of her own marriage, how could he mention his mother's wrong and his own shame to a girl so young? She must be aware that such things were, but how was he, a huge common fellow, to draw near her loveliness with such a tale in his mouth! It would be a wrong to his own class, to his own education! for would it not show the tradesman, or the artisan, whichever they called him, as coarse, and unlit for the company of his social superiors? It would go to prove that in no sense could one of his nurture be regarded as a gentleman! And were there no such reason against it, how could he, even to Barbara, speak of his mother's hidden pain, of his mother's humiliation! It would be treachery! He would be as a spy that had hid himself in a holy place! The thing she could not tell him, how could he tell anyone! On the other hand, if he did not let her know the sad fact, would he not be receiving and cherishing Barbara's friendship on false pretences? He was not what he now seemed to her—and to be other to Barbara than he seemed, was too terrible! Still and again, he was bound to do her the justice of believing that she would not regard him differently because of what he could not help, and would justify his silence for his mother's sake. She would, in her great righteousness, be the first to cry out upon the social rule that visited the sins of the fathers on the mothers and children, and not on the fathers themselves! If then disclosure would make no difference to Barbara, he might, he concluded, let the thing rest—for the time at least—assured of her sisterly sympathy. And with that he bethought him that she had asked news of Alice, and it seemed to him strange. For Alice had not told him that, unable to keep the money she sent from falling into the hands of her mother and going in drink, unwilling to expose her mother, and incapable of letting Barbara spend her money so, she had contrived to have her remittances returned, as if they had changed their dwelling, and their new address was unknown.

He wrote therefore what he thought would set her at ease about them; and then, after thinking and thinking, yielded to the dread lest his heart should make him say things he ought not, and ended with a little poem that had come to him a night or two before.

This was the poem:

If there lie a still, pure sorrow At the heart of everything, If never shall dawn a morrow With healing upon its wing, Then down I kneel to my sorrow, And say, Thou art my king! From old pale joy I borrow A withered song to sing! And with heart entire and thorough, To a calm despair I cling, And, freedman of old king Sorrow, Away Hope's fetters fling!

That was all—and not much, either as poetry, or as consolation to one that loved him; but sometimes, like that ghastly shroud of Icelandic fable, the poem will rise and wrap itself around the poet.

As Richard closed his envelope, he remembered, with a pang of self-reproach, that the hour of his usual meeting with Alice was past, and that Arthur too was in danger of going to bed hungry, for his custom was to put her brother's supper in Alice's handbag. He set out at once for Clerkenwell—on foot notwithstanding his haste, for he was hoarding every penny to get new clothes for Arthur, who was not only much in want of them for warmth, but in risk of losing his situation because of his shabby appearance.

His anxiety to reach the house before the mother came in, spurred him to his best speed. He halted two minutes on the way to buy some slices of ham and some rolls, and ran on again. It was a frosty night, but by the time he reached Everilda-street, he was far from cold. He was rewarded by finding his brother and sister at home, alone, and not too hungry.

He had just time to empty his pockets, and receive a kiss from Alice in return, when they heard the uncertain step of their mother coming up the stair, stopping now and then, and again resuming the ascent. Alice went to watch which door she would turn to when she reached the top, that Richard might go out by the other, for the two rooms communicated. But just as she was entering Arthur's room, Mrs. Manson changed her mind, and turned to the other door, so that Richard was caught in the very act of making his exit. She flew at him, seized him by the hair, and began to pull and cuff him, abusing him as the true son of his father, who did everything on the sly, and never looked an honest woman in the face. Richard said never a word, but let her tug and revile till there was no more strength in her, when she let him go, and dropped into a chair.

The three went half-way down the stair together.

"Don't mind her," said Alice with a great sob. "I hope she didn't hurt you much, Richard!"

"Not a bit," answered Richard.

"Poor mother!" sighed Arthur; "she's not in her right mind! We're in constant terror lest she drop down dead!"

"She's not a very good mother to you!" said Richard.

"No, but that has nothing to do with loving her," answered Alice; "and to think of her dying like that, and going straight to the bad place! Oh, Richard, what shall I do! It turns me crazy to think of it!"

The door above them opened, and the fierce voice of the mother fell upon them; but it was broken by a fit of hiccupping, and she went in again, slamming the door behind her.



CHAPTER XLVII.

THE DOORS OF HARMONY AND DEATH.

That night Richard could not rest. His brain wrought unceasingly.

He had caught cold and was feverish. After his hot haste to reach his brother and sister, he had stood on the stair till his temperature sank low. When at length he slept, he kept starting awake from troublous dreams, and this went on through the night. In the morning he felt better, and rose and set to his work, shivering occasionally. All the week he was unwell, and coughed, but thought the attack an ordinary cold. When Sunday came, he kept his bed, in the hope of getting rid of it; but the next day he was worse. He insisted on getting up, however: he must not seem to be ill, for he was determined, if he could stand, to go to the concert! What with weariness and shortness of breath and sleepiness, however, it was all he could do to stick to his work. But he held on till the evening, when, watching his opportunity, he slipped from the house and made his way, with the help of an omnibus, to the hall.

It was dire work waiting till the door to the orchestra was opened. The air was cold, his lungs heavily oppressed, and his languor almost overpowering. But Paradise was within that closed door, and he was passing through the pains of death to enter into bliss! When at length it seemed to yield to his prayers, he almost fell in the rush, but the good-humoured crowd itself succoured the pale youth, and helped him in: to look at him was to see that he was ill!

The moment the music began, he forgot every discomfort. For, with the first chord of the violins, as if ushered in and companied by the angels themselves of the sweet sounds, Barbara came flitting down the centre of the wide space toward her usual seat. The rows of faces that filled the area were but the waves on which floated the presence of Barbara; the music was the natural element of her being; it flowed from her as from its fountain, radiated from her like odour. It fashioned around her a nimbus of sound, like that made by the light issuing from the blessed ones, as beheld by Dante, which revealed their presence but hid them in its radiance, as the moth is hid in the silk of its cocoon. Richard felt entirely well. The warmth entered into him, and met the warmth generated in him. All was peace and hope and bliss, quaintest mingling of expectation and fruition. Even Arthur Lestrange beside Barbara could not blast his joy. He saw him occasionally offer some small attention; he saw her carelessly accept or refuse it. Barbara gazed at him anxiously, he thought; but he did not know he looked ill; he had forgotten himself.

When the concert was over, he hastened from the orchestra. The moment he issued, the cold wind seized and threatened to strangle him, but he conquered in the struggle, and reached the human torrent debouching in Regent-street. Against it he made gradual way, until he stood near the inner door of the hall. In a minute or two he saw her come, slowly with the crowd, her hand on Arthur's arm, her eyes anxiously searching for Richard. The moment they found him, her course took a drift toward him, and her face grew white as his, for she saw more plainly that he was ill. They edged nearer and nearer; their hands met through the crowd; their letters were exchanged, and without a word they parted. As Barbara reached the door, she turned one moment to look for him, and he saw a depth of care angelic in her eyes. Arthur turned too and saw him, but Richard was so changed he did not recognize him, and thought the suffering look of a stranger had roused the sympathy of his companion.

How he got home, Richard could not have told. Ere he reached the house, he was too ill to know anything except that he had something precious in his possession. He managed to get to bed—not to leave it for weeks. A severe attack of pneumonia had prostrated him, and he knew nothing of his condition or surroundings. He had not even opened his letter. He remembered at intervals that he had a precious thing somewhere, but could not recall what it was.

When he came to himself after many days, it was with a wonderful delight of possession, though whether the object possessed was a thing, or a thought, or a feeling, or a person, he could not distinguish.

"Where is it?" he said, nor knew that he spoke till he heard his own voice.

"Under your pillow," answered his mother.

He turned his eyes, and saw her face as he had never seen it before—pale, and full of yearning love and anxious joy. There was a gentleness and depth in its expression that was new to him. The divine motherhood had come nearer the surface in her boy's illness.

Partly from her anxiety about what she had done and what she had yet to do, the show of her love had, as the boy grew up, gradually retired; her love burned more, and shone less. If Jane Tuke had been able to let her love appear in such forms as suited its strength, I doubt whether the teaching of his father would have had much power upon Richard; certainly he would have been otherwise impressed by the faith of his mother. He would have been prejudiced in favour of the God she believed in, and would have sought hard to account for the ways attributed to him. None the less would it have been through much denial and much suffering that he arrived at anything worth calling faith; while the danger would have been great of his drifting about in such indifference as does not care that God should be righteous, and is ready to call anything just which men in office declare God does, without concern whether it be right or wrong, or whether he really does it or not—without concern indeed about anything at all that is God's. He would have had phantoms innumerable against him. He would have supposed the Bible said things about God which it does not say, things which, if it did say them, ought to be enough to make any honest man reject the notion of its authority as an indivisible whole. He would have had to encounter all the wrong notions of God, dropped on the highway of the universe, by the nations that went before in the march of humanity. He would have found it much harder to work out his salvation, to force his freedom from the false forms given to truth by interpreters of little faith, for they would have seemed born in him because loved into him.

"What did you say, mother dear?" he returned, all astray, seeming to have once known several things, but now to know nothing at all.

"It is under your pillow, Richard," she said again, very tenderly.

"What is it, mother? Something seems strange. I don't know what to ask you. Tell me what it means."

"You have been very ill, my boy; that is what it means."

"Have I been out of my mind?"

"You have been wandering with the fever, nothing more."

"I have been thinking so many things, and they all seemed real!—And you have been nursing me all the long time?"

"Who should have been nursing you, Richard? Do you think I would let any one else nurse my own child? Didn't I nurse the—"

She stopped; she had been on the point of saying—"the mother that bore you?" Her love of her dead sister was one with her love of that sister's living child.

He lay silent for a time, thinking, or rather trying to think, for he felt like one vainly endeavouring to get the focus of a stereoscopic picture. His mind kept going away from him. He knew himself able to think, yet he could not think. It was a revelation to him of our helplessness with our own being, of our absolute ignorance of the modes in which our nature works—of what it is, and what we can and cannot do with it.

"Shall I get it for you, dear?" said his mother.

The morning after the concert, he had taken Barbara's letter from under his pillow, and would not let it out of his hand. His mother, fearing he would wear it to pieces, once and again tried to remove it; but the moment she touched it, he would cry out and strike; and when in his restless turning he dropped it, he showed himself so miserable that she could not but put it in his hand again, when he would lie perfectly quiet for a while. Dreaming of Barbara however, I fancy, he at length forgot her letter, and his mother again put it under his pillow. With the Lord, we shall forget even the gospel of John.

She drew out the crumpled, frayed envelope, and gave it him. The moment he touched it, everything came back to him.

"Now I remember, mother!" he cried. "Thank you, mother! I will try to be a better boy to you. I am sorry I ever vexed you."

"You never vexed me, Richard!" said the mother-heart; "—or if ever you did, I've forgotten it. And now that God has given you back to us, we must see whether we can't do something better for you!"

Richard was so weary that he did not care to ask what she meant, and in a moment was asleep, with the letter in his hand.

When at length he was able to read it, it caused him not a little pleasure, and some dismay. He read that her father was determined she should marry Mr. Lestrange; but her mother was against it; and there was as much dissension at home as ever. She believed lady Ann had talked her father into it, for he had not always favoured the idea. There was indeed greater reason now why both lady Ann and her father should desire it, for there was every likelihood of her being left sole heir to the property, as her brother could not, the doctors said, live many months. She was sure her mother was trying to do right, and she herself did all she could to please her father, but nothing less than her consent to his plans for what he called her settlement in life, would satisfy him, and that she could not give.

She hoped Richard was not forgetting the things they had such talks about in the old days. If it were not for those things, she could not now bear life, or rightly take her part in it. She was almost never alone, and now in constant danger of interruption, so that he must not wonder if her letter broke off abruptly, for she might be wanted any moment. She was leading, or rather being led, a busy life of nothing at all—a life not worth living. Her father, set on, she had no doubt, by lady Ann, had brought her up to town while yet her mother was unable to accompany them, so that she had had to go where, and do what lady Ann pleased. But her mother had at last, exerting herself even beyond her strength, come up to stand by her girl, as she said: she would have no lady Ann interfering with her! She had herself married a man she had not learned to respect, and she was determined her girl should make her own choice—or keep as she was, if she pleased! She was not going to hold her child down for them to bury in money!—And with this the letter broke off.

Barbara's openness about her parents was in harmony with her simplicity and straightforwardness. She was proud of her mother and the way she put things, therefore told all to Richard.

He had a bad night, with delirious dreams, and for some days made little progress. His anxiety to be well, that he might see Barbara, and learn how things were going with her; also that he might again see Alice and Arthur, for whom he feared much, retarded his recovery.

"If the woman is drinking herself to death," he said to himself, "I wish she would be quick about it! In this world she is doing no good to herself, and much harm to others!" But it would be the ruin, he said to himself, of all hope in the care and love of God, to believe that she could be allowed to live a moment longer than it was well she should live. Then he thought how wise must be a God who, to work out his intent, would take all the conduct, good and bad, all the endeavours of all his children, in all their contrarieties, and out of them bring the right thing. If he knew such a God, one to trust in absolutely, he would lie still without one movement of fear, he would go to sleep without one throb of anxiety about any he loved! The perfect Love would not fail because one of his children was sick! He would try to be quiet, if only in the hope that there was a perfect heart of hearts, thinking love to and into and about all its creatures. If there was such a splendour, he would either make him well, and send him out again to do for Alice and Arthur what he could, or he would let him die and go where all he loved would come after him—where he might perhaps help to prepare a place for them!

If matter be all, then must all illness be blinding; if spirit be the deeper and be the causer, then some sicknesses may well be openers of windows into the unseen. It is true that in one mood we are ready to doubt the conclusions of another mood; but there is a power of judging between the moods themselves, with a perception of their character and nature, and the comparative clarity of insight in each; and he who is able to judge the moods, may well judge the judgments of the moods.

One of the benefits of illness is, that either from general weakness, or from the brain's being cast into quiescence, habits are broken for a time, and more simple, childlike, and natural modes of thought and feeling, modes more approximate to primary and original modes, come into action, whereby the right thing has a better chance. A man's self-stereotyped thinking is unfavourable to revelation, whether through his fellows, or direct from the divine. If there be a divine quarter, those must be opener to its influences who are not frozen in their own dullness, cased in their own habits, bound by their own pride to foregone conclusions, or shut up in the completeness of human error, theorizing beyond their knowledge and power.

Having thus in a measure given himself up, Richard began to grow better. It is a joy to think that a man may, while anything but sure about God, yet come into correlation with him! How else should we be saved at all? For God alone is our salvation; to know him is salvation. He is in us all the time, else we could never move to seek him. It is true that only by perfect faith in him can we be saved, for nothing but perfect faith in him is salvation; there is no good but him, and not to be one with that good by perfect obedience, is to be unsaved; but one better thought concerning him, the poorest desire to draw near him, is an approach to him. Very unsure of him we may be: how should we be sure of what we do not yet know? but the unsureness does not nullify the approach. A man may not be sure that the sun is risen, may not be sure that the sun will ever rise, yet has he the good of what light there is. Richard was fed from the heart of God without knowing that he was indeed partaking of the spirit of God. He had been partaking of the body of God all his life. The world had been feeding him with its beauty and essential truth, with the sweetness of its air, and the vastness of its vault of freedom. But now he had begun, in the words of St. Peter, to be a partaker of the divine nature.

It was a long time before he was strong again—in fact he never would be so strong again in this world. His mother took him to the seaside, where, in a warm secluded bay on the south coast, he was wrapt closer, shall I not say, in the garments of the creating and reviving God. He was again a child, and drew nearer to the heart of his mother than he had ever drawn before. Believing he knew her sad secret, he set himself to meet her every wish—which was always some form of anxiety about himself. He spoke so gently to her, that she felt she had never until now had him her very child. How little men think, alas, of the duty that lies in tone! But Richard was started on a voyage of self-discovery. He had begun to learn that regions he had thought wholesome, productive portions of his world, were a terra incognita of swamps and sandy hills, haunted with creeping and stinging things. When a man finds he is not what he thought, that be has been talking line things, and but imagining he belonged to their world, he is on the way to discover that he is not up to his duty in the smallest thing. When, for very despair, it seems impossible to go on, then he begins to know that he needs more than himself; that there is none good but God; that, if he can gain no help from the perfect source of his being, that being ought not to have been given him; and that, if he does not cry for help to the father of his spirit, the more pleasant existence is, the less he deserves it should continue. Richard was beginning to feel in his deepest nature, where alone it can be felt, his need of God, not merely to comfort him in his sorrows, and so render life possible and worth living, but to make him such that he could bear to regard himself; to make him such that he could righteously consent to be. The only thing that can reassure a man in respect of the mere fact of his existence, is to know himself started on the way to grow better, with the hope of help from the source of his being: how should he by himself better that which he was powerless to create? All betterment must be radical: of the roots of his being he knows nothing. His existence is God's; his betterment must be God's too!—God's through honest exercise by man of that which is highest in man—his own will, God's best handiwork. By actively willing the will of God, and doing what of it lies to his doing, the man takes the share offered him in his own making, in his own becoming. In willing actively and operatively to be that which he was made in order to be, he becomes creative—so far as a man may. In this kind also he becomes like his Father in heaven.

If a reader say Richard was too young to think thus, it only proves that he could not think so at Richard's age, and goes for little. I may be interpreting, and rendering more definite the thoughts and feelings that passed through him: it does not follow that I misrepresent. Many thoughts must be made more definite in expression, else they could not be expressed at all; many feelings are as hazy as real, and some of them must be left to music.

He grew in graciousness and in favour with God and his mother. Often did she meditate whether the hour was not come for the telling of her secret, but now one thing, now another deterred her. One time she feared the excitement in the present state of his health; another, she judged it unfair to the husband who had behaved with such generosity, to yield him no part in the pleasure of the communication.

Once, to comfort him when he seemed depressed, she ventured to say—

"Would you like better to go to Oxford or to Cambridge, Richard?"

He looked up with a smile.

"What makes you ask that, mammy?" he rejoined.

"Perhaps it could be managed!" she answered—leaving him to suppose his father might send him.

"Is it because you think I shall never be able to work again?—Look at that!" he returned, extending an arm on which the muscle had begun to put in an appearance.

"It's not for your strength," she answered. "For that, you could do well enough! But think of the dust! It's so irritating to the lungs! And then there's the stooping all day long!"

"Never mind, mother; I'm quite able for it, dust and all—or at least shall soon be. We mustn't be anxious about others any more than about ourselves. Doesn't the God you believe in tell you so?"

"Don't you believe in him then, Richard?" said his mother sadly.

"I think I do—a little—in a sort of a way—believe in God—but I hope to believe in him ten thousand times more!"

His mother gave a sigh.

"What more would you have, mother dear?" said Richard. "A man cannot be a saint all at once!"

"No, indeed, nor a woman either!" she answered. "I've been a believer all these years, and I'm no nearer a saint than ever."

"But you're trying to be one, ain't you, mammy?"

She made him no reply, and presently reverted to their former topic—perhaps took refuge in it.

"I think it might be managed—some day!" she said. "You could go on with your trade after, if you liked. Why shouldn't a college-man be a tradesman? Why shouldn't a tradesman know as much as a gentleman?"

"Why, indeed, mother! If I thought it wouldn't be too much for father and you, there are not many things I should like better than going to Oxford. You are good to me like God himself!"

"Richard!" said his mother, shocked. She thought she served God by going to church, not by being like him in every word and look of love she gave her boy.

The mere idea of going to college, and thus taking a step nearer to Barbara, began immediately to better his health. It gave him many a happy thought, many a cottage and castle in the air, with more of a foundation than he knew. But his mother did not revert to it; and one day suddenly the thought came to Richard that perhaps she meant to apply to sir Wilton for the means of sending him. Castle and cottage fell in silent ruin. His soul recoiled from the idea with loathing—as much for his mother's sake as his own. Having married his reputed father, she must have no more relation, for good any more than for bad, with sir Wilton—least of all for his sake! To her he was dead; and ought to be as dead as disregard could make him! So, at least, thought Richard. He was sorry he had confessed he should like to go to Oxford. If his mother again alluded to the thing, he would tell her he had changed his mind, and would not interrupt the exercise of his profession as surgeon to old books.



CHAPTER XLVIII.

DEATH THE DELIVERER.

The spring advanced; the days grew a little warmer; and at length, partly from economic considerations, it was determined they should go home. When they reached London, they found a great difference in the weather: it cannot be said she owes her salubrity to her climate. Fog and drizzle, frost and fog, were the embodiment of its unvarying mutability. At once Richard was worse, and dared not think, for his mother's sake, and the labour she had spent upon him, of going to the next popular concert, if indeed those delights had not ceased for the season. But he ought to try, for he could do that in the middle of the day, at least to get news of Arthur Manson. He dreaded hearing that he was no more in this world. The cold wintry weather, and the return to poor and spare nourishment caused by Richard's illness, must have been hard upon him! It was a continual sorrow to Richard that he had not been able to get him his new clothes before he was taken ill. So the first morning he felt it possible, he took his way to the city. There he learned that the company had dispensed with Arthur's services, because his attendance had become so irregular.

"You see, sir," said the porter, "the gov'nors they don't think no more of a man than they do of a horse: so long as he can hold the shafts up an' lean agin the collar, he's money; when he can't no longer, he's dirt!"

Sad at heart, Richard set out for Clerkenwell. He was ill able for the journey, but Arthur was dying! He would brave the mother for the sake of the son! He got into an omnibus which took him a good part of the way, and walked the rest. When at length he looked up at the dreary house, he saw the blinds of the windows drawn down. A pang of fear went through his heart, and an infilial murmur awoke in his brain:—why was he, on whom those poor lives almost depended, made feeble as themselves, and incapable of helping them? After all his hoping and trusting, could there be a God in the earth and things go like that? The look of things seemed the truth of things; the seen denied the unseen. Cold and hunger and desertion; ugly, mocking failure; heartless comfort, and hopeless misery, made up the law of life! Moody and wretched he went up the stair to the darkened floor.

When he knocked at the front room, that in which Alice slept with her mother, it was opened by Alice, looking more small and forlorn than he had yet seen her, with hollower cheeks and larger eyes, and a smile to make an angel weep.

"Richard!" she cried, with a voice in which the very gladness sounded like pain. A pink flush rose in her poor wasted cheeks, and she lay still in his arms as if she had gone to live there.

He could not, for pity, speak one word.

"How ill you look!" she murmured. "I knew you must be ill! I thought you might be dead! Oh, God is good to leave you to us!" Then bursting into tears, "How wicked of me," she sobbed, "to feel anything like gladness, with my mother lying there, and me not able to do anything for her, and not knowing what's become of her, or how things are going with her!—We shall never see her again!"

"Don't say that, Alice! Never say never about anything except it be bad. You can't be sure, you know. You can't be sure of anything that's not in your very mouth—and then sometimes you can't swallow it!—But how's Arthur?"

"He'll know all about it soon!" she answered, with a touch of bitterness. "If he had been left me, we should have got along somehow. He would have lain in bed, and I would have worked beside him! How I could have worked for him! But he's past hope now! He'll never get up again."

"Oh God," cried Richard in his heart, where an agony of will wrestled with doubt, "if thou art, thou wilt hear me, and take pity on her, and on us all!—I dare not pray, Alice," he went on aloud, "that he may live, but I will pray God to be with him. It would be poor kindness to want him left with us, if he is taking him where he will be well. May I go and see him?"

"Surely, Richard.—But mayn't I let him know first? The surprise might be too much for him."

Their talk had waked him, however, and he knew his brother's voice. "Richard! Richard!" he cried, so loud that it startled Alice: he had not spoken above a whisper for days. Richard opened his door, and went in. But when he saw Arthur, he could scarcely recognize him, he was so wasted. His eyes stood out like balls from his sunken cheeks, and the smile with which he greeted him was all teeth, like the helpless smile of a skull. Overcome with tenderness, the stronger that he would have passed him in the street as one unknown, Richard stooped and kissed his forehead, then stood speechless, holding the thin leaf of a hand that strained his. Arthur tried to speak, but his cough came on, and his brother begged him to be silent.

"I will go into the next room with Alice," he said, "and come to you again. I shall see you often now, I hope. I've been ill or I should have been here fifty times."

In the next room lay the motionless form of the unmotherly mother. A certain something of human grace had returned to her countenance. Richard did not like looking at her; he felt that, not loving her, he had no right to let his eyes rest on her. But she had been sinned against like his own mother: he must not fail her with what sympathy she might claim!

"Don't think hard things of her," said Alice, as if she knew what he was thinking. "She had not the strength of some people. I believe myself she could not help it. She had been used to everything she wanted!"

"I pity her heartily," answered Richard.

She threw her arms round his neck, and clung to him as if she would never more let him go.

"But what am I to do?" she said, releasing him. "If I stay at home to nurse Arthur, we must both die of hunger. If I go away, there is nobody to do anything for him!"

"I wish I could stay with him!" returned Richard. "But I've been so long ill that I have no money, and I don't know when I shall have any. I have just one shilling in my possession. Take it, dear."

"I can't take your last shilling, Richard!"

"There's no fear of me," he said; "I shall have everything I want. It makes me ashamed to think of it. You must just creep on for a while as best you can, while I think what to do. Only there's the funeral!"

Alice gave a cry choked by a sob.

"There is no help!" she said in a voice of despair. "The parish is all that is left us!"

"It don't matter much," rejoined Richard. "For my part I don't care a paring what becomes of my old clothes when I've done with them! You needn't think, whether she be anywhere or nowhere, that she cares how her body gets put under the earth! Don't trouble about it, Alice; it really is nothing. I would come to the funeral, but I don't see how I can. I don't know now what I shall say to my mother!—Tell Arthur I hope to see him again soon; I must not stop now. I won't forget you, Alice—not for an hour, I think. Beg some one in the house to go in to him now and then while you are away. I shall soon do something to cheer him up a bit. Good-night, dear!"

With a heavy heart Richard went. It was all he could do to get home before dark, having to walk all the way. His mother was much distressed to see him so exhausted; but he managed not to tell her what he had been about. He had some tea and went to bed, and there remained all the next day. And while he was in bed, it came to him clear and plain what he must do. It was certain that for a long time he could do nothing for Arthur and Alice out of his own pocket. Even if he got to work at once, he could not take his wages as before, seeing his parents had spent upon him almost all they had saved!

But there was one who ought to help them! Specially in such sore need had they a right to the saving help of their own father! He would go to his father and their father—and as the words rose in his mind, he wondered where he had heard something like them before.

The next day he begged his father and mother to let him spend a week or two with his grandfather.



CHAPTER XLIX.

THE CAVE IN THE FIRE.

The day after, well wrapt from the cold, he took his place in a slow train, and at the station was heartily welcomed by his grandfather, who had come with his pony-cart to take him home. Settled in the room once occupied by Alice, he felt like a usurper, a robber of the helpless: he had left her in misery and wretchedness, and was in the heart of the comfort that had once been hers. He had to tell himself that it was foolish; that he was there for her sake.

He took his grandfather at once into his confidence, begging him not to let his mother know: and Simon, who had in former days experienced something of the hardness of his true-hearted daughter, entered into the thing with a brooding kind of smile. He saw no reason why Richard should not make the attempt, but shook his head at the prospect of success. Doubtless the baronet thought he had done all that could be required of him! He would have Richard rest a day before encountering him but when he heard in what condition he had left Alice and her brother, he said no more, but the next morning had his trap ready to drive him to Mortgrange.

Richard's heart beat fast as he entered the lodge-gate, and walked up to the front door. After a moment's bewilderment the servant who answered his ring recognized him, and expressed concern that he looked so ill. When he asked to see sir Wilton, the man, thinking he came to resume the work so suddenly abandoned, said he was in the library, having his morning cigar.

"Then I'll just step in!" said Richard; and the footman gave way as to a member of the household.

Sir Wilton, now an elderly and broken man, sat in the same chair, and in the same attitude, as when Richard, a new-born and ugly child, had, in the arms of his aunt, his first interview with him, nearly one and twenty years before. The relation between them had not developed a hair's-breadth since that moment, and Richard, partly from the state of his health, could not, with all the courage he could gather, help quailing a little before the expected encounter; but he remained outwardly quiet and seemingly cool. The sun was not shining into the room, and it was rather dark. Sir Wilton sat with his back to the one large bay-window, and Richard received its light on his face as he entered. He stood an instant, hesitating. His father did not speak, but sat looking straight at him, staring indeed as at something portentous—much as when first he saw the ugly apparition of his infant heir. Richard's illness had brought out, in the pallor and emaciation of his countenance, what likeness there was in him to his mother; and, strange to say, at the moment when the door opened to admit him, sir Wilton was thinking of the monstrous baby his wife had left him, and wondering if the creature were still alive, and as hideous as twenty years before.

It was not very strange, however. Sir Wilton had been annoyed with his wife that morning, and it was yet a bitterer thing not to be able to hurt her in return, which, because of her cold imperturbability, was impossible, say what he might. As often, therefore, as he sat in silent irritation with her, the thought of his lost child never failed to present itself. What a power over her ladyship would he not possess, what a plough and harrow for her frozen equanimity, if only he knew where the heir to Mortgrange was! He was damned ugly, but the uglier the better! If he but had him, he swore he would have a merry time, with his lady's pride on its marrow-bones! After so many years the poor lad might, ugly as he was, turn out presentable, and if so, then, by heaven, that smooth-faced gentleman, Arthur, should shift for himself!

Suddenly appeared Richard, with his mother in his face; and before his father had time to settle what the deuce it could mean, the apparition spoke.

"I am very sorry to intrude upon you, sir Wilton," he said, "but—"

Here he paused.

"—But you've got something to tell me—eh?" suggested sir Wilton. He was on the point of adding, "If it be where you got those eyes, I may have to ask you to sit down!" but he checked himself, and said only, "You'd better make haste, then; for the devil is at the door in the shape of my damned gout!"

"I came to tell you, sir Wilton," replied Richard, plunging at once into the middle of things, which was indeed the best way with sir Wilton, "about a son of yours—"

"What!" cried sir Wilton, putting his hands on the arms of his chair and leaning forward as if on the point of rising to his feet. "Where the devil is he? What do you know about him?"

"He is lying at the point of death—dying of hunger, I may say."

"Rubbish!" cried the baronet contemptuously. "You want to get money out of me! But you shan't!—not a damned penny!"

"I do want to get money from you, sir," said Richard. "I kept the poor fellow alive—kept him in dinners at least, him and his sister, till I fell ill and couldn't work."

At the word sister the baronet grew calmer. It was nothing about the lost heir! The other sort did not matter: they were no use against the enemy!

Richard paused. The baronet stared.

"I haven't a penny to call my own, or I should not have come to you," resumed Richard.

"I thought so! That's your orthodox style! But you've come to the wrong man!" returned sir Wilton. "I never give anything to beggars."

He did not in the least doubt what he heard, but he scarcely knew what he answered—wondering where he had seen the fellow, and how he came to be so like his wife. The remembered ugliness of her infant prevented all suggestion that this handsome fellow might be the same.

"You are the last man, sir Wilton, from whom I would ask anything for myself," said Richard.

"Why so?"

Richard hesitated. To let him suspect the same claim in himself, would be fatal.

"I swear to you, sir Wilton," he said, "by all that men count sacred, I come only to tell you that Arthur and Alice Manson, your son and daughter, are in dire want. Your son may be dead; he looked like it three days ago, and had no one to attend to him; his sister had to leave him to earn their next day's food. Their mother lay a corpse in the other of their two rooms."

"Oh! she's gone, is she! That alters the case. But what became of all the money I gave her? It was more than her body was worth; soul she never had any!"

"She lost it somehow, and her son and daughter starved themselves to keep her in plenty, so that by the time she died, they were all but dead themselves."

"A pair of fools."

"A good son and daughter, sir!"

"Attached to the young woman, eh?" asked the baronet, looking hard at him.

"Very much; but hardly more than to her brother," answered Richard. "God knows if I had but my strength," he cried, almost in despair, and suddenly shooting out his long thin arms, with his two hands, wasted white, at the ends of them, "I would work myself to the bone for them, and not ask you for a penny!"

"I provided for their mother!—why didn't they look after the money? I'm not accountable for them!"

"Ain't you accountable for giving the poor things a mother like that, sir?"

"By Jove, you have me there! She was a bad lot—a damned liar!—Young fellow, I don't know who you are, but I like your pluck! There ain't many I'd let stand talking at me like that! I'll give you something for the poor creatures—that is, mind you, if you've told me the truth about their mother! You're sure she's dead? Not a penny shall they have if she's alive!"

"I saw her dead, sir, with my own eyes."

"You're sure she wasn't shamming?"

"She couldn't have shammed anything so peaceful."

The baronet laughed.

"Believe me, sir," said Richard, "she's dead—and by this time buried by the parish."

"God bless my soul! Well, it's none of my fault!"

"She ate and drank her own children!" said Richard with a groan, for his strength was failing him. He sank into a chair.

"I will give you a cheque," said sir Wilton, rising, and going to a writing-table in the window. "I will give you twenty pounds for them in the meantime—and then we'll see—we'll see!—that is," he added, turning to Richard, "if you swear by God that you have told me nothing but the truth!"

"I swear," said Richard solemnly, "by all my hopes in God the saviour of men, that I have not wittingly uttered a word that is untrue or incorrect."

"That's enough. I'll give you the cheque."

He turned again to the table, sat down, searched for his keys, unlocked and drew out a drawer, took from it a cheque-book, and settled himself to write with deliberation, thinking all the time. When he had done—"Have the goodness to come and fetch your money," he said tartly.

"With pleasure!" answered Richard, and went up to the table.

Sir Wilton turned on his seat, and looked him in the face, full in the eyes. Richard steadily encountered his gaze.

"What is your name?" said sir Wilton at length. "I must make the cheque payable to you!"

"Richard Tuke, sir," answered Richard.

"What are you?"

"A bookbinder. I was here all the summer, sir, repairing your library."

"Oh! bless my soul!—Yes! that's what it was! I thought I had seen you somewhere! Why didn't you tell me so at first?"

"It had nothing to do with my coming now, and I did not imagine it of any interest to you, sir."

"It would have saved me the trouble of trying to remember where I had seen you!"

Then suddenly a light flashed across his face.

"By heaven," he muttered, "I understand it now!—They saw it—that look on his face!—By Jove!—But no; she never saw her!—She must have heard something about him then!—They didn't treat you well, I believe!" he said: "—turned you away at a moment's notice!—I hope they took that into consideration when they paid you?"

"I made no complaint, sir. I never asked why I was dismissed!"

"But they made it up to you—didn't they?"

"I don't submit to ill usage, sir." "That's right! I'm glad you made them pay for it!"

"To take money for ill usage is to submit to it, it seems to me!" said Richard.

"By Jove, there are not many would call money ill usage!—Well, it wasn't right, and I'll have nothing to do with it!—Here," he went on, wheeling round to the table, and drawing his cheque-book toward him, "I will give you another cheque for yourself."

"I beg your pardon, sir," said Richard, "but I can take nothing for myself! Don't you see, sir?—As soon as I was gone, you would think I had after all come for my own sake!"

"I won't, I promise you. I think you a very honest fellow!"

"Then, sir, please continue to think me so, and don't offer me money!"

"Lest you should be tempted to take it?"

"No; lest I should annoy you by the use I made of it!"

"Tut, tut! I don't care what you do with it! You can't annoy me!"

He wrote a second cheque, blotted it, then finished the other, and held out both to Richard.

"I can't give you so much as the other poor beggars; you haven't the same claim upon me!" he said.

Richard took the cheques, looked at them, put the larger in his pocket, walked to the fire, and placed the other in the hottest cavern of it.

"By Jove!" cried the baronet, and again stared at him: he had seen his mother do precisely the same thing—with the same action, to the very turn of her hand, and with the same choice of the central gulf of fire!

Richard turned to sir Wilton, and would have thanked him again on behalf of Alice and Arthur, but something got up in his throat, and, with a grateful look and a bend of the head, he made for the door speechless.

"I say, I say, my lad!" cried sir Wilton, and Richard stopped.

"There's something in this," the baronet went on, "more than I understand! I would give a big cheque to know what is in your mind! What does it all mean?"

Richard looked at him, but said nothing: he was in some sort fascinated by the old man's gaze.

"Suppose now," said sir Wilton, "I were to tell you I would do whatever you asked me so far as it was in my power—what would you say?"

"That I would ask you for nothing," answered Richard.

"I make the promise; I say solemnly that I will give you whatever you ask of me—provided I can do it honestly," said the baronet.

"What a damned fool I am!" he thought with himself. "The devil is in me to let the fellow walk over me like this! But I must know what it all means! I shall find some way out of it!"

For one moment the books around him seemed to Richard to rush upon his brain like troops to the assault of a citadel; but the next he said—

"I can ask you for nothing whatever, sir; but I thank you from my heart for my poor friends, your children. Believe me I am grateful."

With a lingering look at his father, he left the room.



CHAPTER L

DUCK-FISTS.

The godless old man was strangely moved. He rose, but instead of ringing the bell, hobbled after Richard to the door. As he opened it, however, he heard the hall-door close. He went to it, but by the time he reached it, the bookbinder had turned a corner of the house, to go by a back-way to the spot where his grandfather was waiting for him.

He found him in his cart, immovably expectant, his pony eating the grass at the edge of the road. Before he got his head pulled up, Richard was in the cart beside him.

"Drive on, grandfather," he panted in triumph. "I've got it!"

"Got what, lad?" returned the old man, with a flash in his eyes, and a forward strain of his neck.

"What I wanted. Money. Twenty pounds."

"Bah! twenty pounds!" returned Simon with contempt, and a jerk of his head the other way.

He had himself noted Richard's likeness to his daughter, and imagined it impossible sir Wilton should not also see it.

"But of course," he went on, "twenty pounds will be a large sum to them, and give them time to look about, and see what can be done. And now I'll tell you what, lad: if the young man is fit to be moved when you go back, you just bring him down here—to the cottage, I mean—and it shan't cost him a ha'penny. I've a bit of a nest-egg as ain't chalk nor yet china; and Jessie is going to be well married; and who knows but the place may suit him as it did his sister! You look to it when you get home."

"I will indeed, grandfather!—You're a good man, grandfather: the poor things are no blood of yours!"

"Where's the odds o' that!" grunted Simon. "I reckon it was your God and mine as made 'em!"

Richard felt in his soul that, little reason as he had to be proud of his descent, he had at least one noble grandfather.

"You're a good man, grandfather!" he repeated meditatively.

"Middlin'," returned the old man, laughing. "I'm not so good by a long chalk as my maker meant me, and I'm not so bad as the devil would have me. But if I were the powers that be, I wouldn't leave things as they are! I'd have 'em a bit straightened out afore I died!"

"That shows where you come from, Mr. Wingfold would say; for that is just what God is always doing."

"I know the man; I know your Mr. Wingfold! Since you went, he's been more than once or twice to the smithy to ask after you. He's one o' the right sort, he is! He's a man, he is!—not an old woman in breeches! My soul! why don't they walk and talk and look like men? Most on 'em as I've seen are no more like men than if they was drawn on the wall with a coal! If they was all like your Mr. Wingfold now! Why, the devil wouldn't hare a chance! I've a soft heart for the clergy—always had, though every now and then they do turn me sick!"

They were spinning along the road, half-way home, behind the little four-legged business in the shafts, when they became aware of a quick sharp trot behind them. Neither looked round: the blacksmith was minding his pony and the clergy, and the twenty pounds in Richard's heart were making it sing a new song. What a thing is money even, with God in it. The horseman came alongside the cart, and slackened his pace!

"Sir Wilton wants to see Mr. Tuke again," he said. "He made a mistake in the cheque he gave him."

An arrow of fear shot through Richard's heart. What did it mean? Was the precious thing going to be taken from him? Was his hope to be destroyed and his heart left desolate? He took the cheque from his pocket and examined it. Simon had pulled up his pony, and they were standing in the middle of the highway, the old man waiting his grandson's decision. Richard was not unaccustomed to cheques in payment of his work, and he could see nothing amiss with the baronet's: it was made payable to bearer, and not crossed: Alice could take it to the bank and get the money for it! The next moment, however, he noted that it was payable at a branch-bank in the town of Barset, near Mortgrange. The baronet, he concluded, had, with more care than he would have expected of him, thought of this, and that it would cause trouble, so had sent his man to bring him back, that he might replace the cheque with one payable in London. His heart warmed toward his father.

"I see!" he said. "I'm sorry to give you the trouble, grandfather, but I'm afraid we must go!"

Simon turned the pony's head without a word, and they went trotting briskly back to Mortgrange. Richard explained the matter as it seemed to him.

"I'm glad to find him so considerate!" said the old man. "It's a bad cheese that don't improve with age! Only men ain't cheeses!—If I'd brought up my girls better,—" he went on reflectively, but Richard interrupted him.

"You ain't going to hit my mother, grandfather!" said Richard.

"No, no, lad; I learned my manners better than that! Whatever I was going to say, I was thinking of my own faults and no one else's. But it's not possible we should be wise at the outset, and I trust the Maker will remember it. He'll be considerate, lad!—The Bible would call it merciful, but I don' care for parson-words! I like things that are true to sound true, just as any common honest man would say them!"

The moment he saw that Richard was indeed gone, the baronet swore to himself that the fellow was his own son. He was his mother all over!—anything but ugly, and far fitter to represent the family than the smooth-faced ape lady Ann had presented him with! But a doubt came: his late wife had a sister somewhere, and a son of hers might have stolen a likeness to his lady-aunt! The tradesman fellow knew of the connection, and pretended to himself not to think much of it!

"What are we coming to, by Jove!" muttered the baronet. "The pride of the lower classes is growing portentous!—No, the fellow is none of mine!" he concluded with a sigh.

Alas for his grip on lady Ann! The pincers had melted in his grasp, and she was gone! It was a pity! If he had been a better husband to poor Ruby, he would have taken better care of her child, ugly as he was, and would have had him now to plague lady Ann! But stop! there was something odd about the child—something more than mere ugliness—something his nurse had shown him in that very room! By Jove! what was it? It had something to do with ducks, or geese, or swans, or pelicans! He had mentioned the thing to his wife, he knew, and she was sure to have remembered it! But he was not going to ask her! Very likely she had known the fellow by it, and therefore sent him out of the house!—Yes! yes! by Jove! that was it! He had webs between his fingers and toes!—He might have got rid of them, no doubt, but he must see his hands!

All this passed swiftly through sir Wilton's mind. He rang the library bell furiously, and sent a groom after the bookbinder. They drove in at the gate, but stopped a little way from the house. Richard ran to the great door, found it open, and went straight to the library. There sat the baronet as at first.

"I bethought me," said sir Wilton the moment he entered, "that I had given you a cheque on the branch at Barset, when it would probably suit you better to have one on headquarters in London!"

"It was very kind of you to think of it, sir," answered Richard.

"Kind! I don't know about that! I'm not often accused of that weakness!" returned sir Wilton, rising with a grin—in which, however, there was more of humour than ill nature.

He went to the table in the window, sat down, unlocked a drawer, took out a cheque-book, and began to write a cheque.

"What did you say was your name?" he asked: "these cheques are all made to order, and I should prefer your drawing the money."

Richard gave him again the name he had always been known by.

"Tuke! What a beast of a name!" said the baronet. "How do you spell it?"

Richard's face flushed, but he would not willingly show anger with one who had granted the prayer of his sorest need. He spelled the name to him as unconcernedly as he could. But the baronet had a keen ear.

"Oh, you needn't be crusty!" he said. "I meant no harm. One has fancies about names, you know! What did they call your mother before she was married?"

Richard hesitated. He did not want sir Wilton to know who he was. He felt that, the relation between them known by both, he must behave to his father in a way he would not like. But he must, nevertheless, speak the truth! Wherever he had not spoken the truth, he had repented, and been ashamed, and had now come to see that to tell a lie was to step out of the march of the ages led by the great will. "Her name, sir, was Armour," he said.

"Hey!" cried the baronet with a start. Yet he had all but expected it.

"Yes, sir,—Jane Armour."

"Jane!" said his father with an accent of scorn. "—Not a bit of it!—Jane!" he repeated, and muttered to himself—"What motive could there be for misinforming the boy as to the Christian name of his mother?"

For, the moment he saw the youth again, the spell was upon him afresh, and he felt all but certain he was his own.

Richard stood perplexed. Sir Wilton had taken his mother's name oddly for any supposition. He had said Mrs. Manson was a liar: might not her assertion of a relation between them be as groundless as it was spiteful? He had at once acknowledged the Mansons, but showed no recognition of himself on hearing his mother's name? There might be nothing in Mrs. Manson's story; he might after all be the son of John as well as of Jane Tuke! Only, alas, then, Alice and Arthur would not be his sister and brother! They would be God's children all the same, though, and he God's child! they would still be his brother and sister, to love and to keep.

"Here, put your name on the back there," said the baronet, having blotted the cheque. "I have made it payable to your order, and without your name it is worth nothing."

"It will be safer to endorse it at the bank, sir," returned Richard.

"I see you know what you're about!" grinned sir Wilton—saying to himself, however, "The rascal will be too many for me!—But," he continued, "I see too you don't know how to sign your own name! I had better alter it to bearer, with my initials! Damn it! your paltry cheque has given me more trouble than if it had been for ten thousand! Sit down there, will you, and write your name on that sheet of paper."

Richard knew the story of Talleyrand—how, giving his autograph to a lady, he wrote it at the top left-hand corner of the sheet, so that she could write above or before it, neither an order for money nor a promise of marriage: yielding to an absurd impulse, he did the same. The baronet burst into loud laughter, which, however, ceased abruptly: he had not gained his end!

"What comical duck-fists you've got!" he cried, risking the throw. "I once knew a man whose fingers and toes too were tied together that way! He swam like a duck!"

"My feet are more that way than my hands," replied Richard. "Only some of my fingers have got the web between them. My mother made me promise to put up with the monstrosity till I came of age. She seemed to think some luck lay in it."

"Your mother!" murmured the baronet, and kept eyeing him. "By Jove," he said aloud, "your mother—! Who is your mother?"

"As I told you, sir, my mother's name is Jane Tuke!"

"Born Armour?"

"Yes, sir."

"By heaven!" said the baronet to himself, "I see it all now! That terrible nurse was one of the family—and carried him away because she didn't like the look of my lady! Don't I wish I had had half her insight! Perhaps she was cousin to Robina—perhaps her own sister! Simon, the villain, will know all about it!" He sat silent for a moment.

"Hm!—Now tell me, you young rascal," he said, "why didn't you put in a claim for yourself instead of those confounded Mansons?"

"Why should I, sir? I didn't want anything. I have all I desire—except a little more strength to work, and that is coming."

The baronet kept gazing at him with the strangest look on his wicked, handsome old face.

"There is something you should have asked me for!" he said at length, in a gentler tone.

"What is that, sir?"

"Your rights. You have a claim upon me before anyone else in the whole world!—I like you, too," he went on in yet gentler tone, with a touch of mockery in it. Apparently he still hesitated to commit himself. "I must do something for you!"

His son could contain himself no longer.

"I would ask nothing, I would take nothing," he said, as calmly as he could, though his voice trembled, and his heart throbbed with the beginnings of love, "from a man who had wronged my mother!"

"Damn the rascal! I never wronged his mother!—Who said I wronged your mother, you scoundrel? I'll take my oath she never did! Answer me directly who told you so!"

His voice had risen to a roar of anger.

His son could do the dead no wrong by speaking the truth.

"Mrs. Manson told me," he began, but was not allowed to finish the sentence.

"Damned liar she always was!" cried the baronet—with such a fierceness in his growl as made Richard call to mind a certain bear in the Zoological gardens. "Then it was she that had you stolen! The beast ought to have died on the gallows, not in her bed! Ah, she was the one to plot, the snake! In this whole curse of a world, she was the meanest devil I ever came across, and I've known more than a few!"

"I know nothing about her, sir, except as the mother of Arthur, my schoolfellow. She seemed to hate me! She said I belonged to you, and had no right to be better off than her children!"

"How did she know you?"

"I can't tell, sir."

"You are like your mother, but the snake never can have set eyes on her!—Give me that cheque. Her fry shan't have a farthing! Let them rot alive with their dead dam!"

He held out his hand: the second cheque lay on the table, and Richard had the former still in his possession. He did not move, nor did sir Wilton urge his demand.

"Did I not tell you?" he resumed. "Did I not say she was a liar? I never did your mother a wrong—nor you neither, though I did swear at you a bit, you were so damned ugly. I don't blame you. You couldn't help it! Lord, what a display the woman made of your fingers and toes, as if the webs were something to be proud of, and atoned for the face!—Can you swim?"

"Fairly well, sir," answered Richard carelessly.

"Your mother swam like a—Naiad, was it—or Nereid?—I forget—damn it!"

"I don't know the difference in their swimming."

"Nor any other difference, I dare say!"

"I know the one was a nymph of the sea, the other of a river."

"Oh! you know Greek, then?"

"I wish I did, sir: I was not long enough at school. I had to learn a trade and be independent."

"By Jove, I wish I knew a trade and was independent! But you shall learn Greek, my boy! There will be some good in teaching you! I never learned anything?—But how the deuce do you know about Naiads and Nereids and all that bosh, if you don't know Greek?"

"I know my Keats, sir. I had to plough with his heifer though—use my Lempriere, I mean!"

"Good heavens!" said the baronet, who knew as little of Keats as any Lap.—"I wish I had been content to take you with all your ugliness, and bring you up myself, instead of marrying Lot's widow!"

Richard fancied he preferred the bringing up he had had, but he said nothing. Indeed he could make nothing of the whole business. How was it that, if sir Wilton had done his mother no wrong, his mother was the wife of John Tuke? He was bewildered.

"You wouldn't like to learn Greek, then?" said his father.

"Yes, sir; indeed I should!"

"Why don't you say so then? I never saw such a block! I say you shall learn Greek!—Why do you stand there looking like a dead oyster?"

"I beg your pardon, sir! May I have the other cheque?"

"What other cheque?"

"The cheque there for my brother and sister, sir," answered Richard, pointing to it where the baronet had laid it, on the other side of him.

"Brother and sister!"

"The Mansons. sir," persisted Richard.

"Oh, give them the cheque and be damned to them! But remember they're no brother and sister of yours, and must never be alluded to as such, or as persons you have any knowledge of. When you've given them that,"—he pointed to the cheque which still lay beside him—"you drop their acquaintance."

"That I cannot do, sir."

"There's a good beginning now! But I might have expected it!—You tell me to my face you won't do what I order you?"

"I can't, sir; it wouldn't be right."

"Fiddlesticks!—Wouldn't be right! What's that to you? It's my business. You've got to do what I tell you."