There & Back - George MacDonald (best e book reader for android TXT) 📗

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