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

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."

"I must go by my conscience, sir."

"Oh, damn your conscience! Will you promise, or will you not? You're to have nothing to say to those young persons."

"I will not promise."

"Not if I promise to look after them?"

"No, sir." His father was silent for a moment, regarding him-not all in anger.

"Well, you're a good-plucked one, I allow? But you're the greatest fool, the dullest young ass out, notwithstanding. You won't suit me-though you are web-footed!-Why, damn it, boy! don't you understand yet that I'm your father?"

"Mrs. Manson told me so, sir."

"Oh, rot Mrs. Manson! she told you a damned lie! She told you I wronged your mother! I tell you I married her! What a blockhead you are! Look there, with your miserable tradesman's-eyes: all those books will be yours one day!-to put in the fire if you like, or mend at from morning to night, just as you choose! You fool! Ain't you my son, heir to Mortgrange, and whatever I may choose to give you besides!"

Richard's heart gave a bound as if it would leap to heaven. It was not the land; it was not the money; it was not the books; it was not even Barbara; it was Arthur and Alice that made it bound. But the voice of his father went on.

"You know now, you idiot," it said, "why you can have nothing more to do with that cursed litter of Mansons!"

Richard's heart rose to meet the heartlessness of his father.

"They are my brother and sister, sir!" he said.

"And what the devil does it matter to you if they are! It's my business that, not yours! You had nothing to do with it! You didn't make the Mansons!"

"No, sir; but God made us all, and says we're to love our brethren."

"Now don't you come the pious over me! It won't pay here! Mind you, nobody heard me acknowledge you! By the mighty heavens, I will deny knowing anything about you! You'll have to prove to the court of chancery that you're my son, born in wedlock, and kidnapped in infancy: by Jove, you'll find it stiff! Who'll advance you the money to carry it there?-you can't do it without money. Nobody; the property's not entailed, and who cares whether it be sir Richard or sir Arthur? What's the title without the property! But don't imagine I should mind telling a lie to keep the two together. I'm not a nice man; I don't mind lying! I'm a bad man!-that I know better than you or any one else, and you'll find it uncomfortable to differ and deal with me both at once!"

"I will not deny my own flesh and blood," said Richard.

"Then I will deny mine, and you may go rot with them."

"I will work for them and myself," said Richard.

Sir Wilton glared at him. Richard made a stride to the table. The baronet caught up the cheque. Richard darted forward to seize it. Was his truth to his friends to be the death of them? He would have the money! It was his! He had told him to take it!

What might have followed I dare not think. Richard's hands were out to lay hold on his father, when happily he remembered that he had not given him back the former cheque, and Barset was quite within reach of his grandfather's pony! He turned and made for the door. Sir Wilton read his thought.

"Give me that cheque," he cried, and hobbled to the bell.

Richard glanced at the lock of the door: there was no key in it! Besides there were two more doors to the room! He darted out: there was the man, far off down the passage, coming to answer the bell! He hastened to meet him.

"Jacob," he said, "sir Wilton rang for you: just run down with me to the gate, and give the woman there a message for me."

He hurried to the door, and the man, nothing doubting, followed him.

"Tell her," said Richard as they went, "if she should see Mr. Wingfold pass, to ask him to call at old Armour's smithy. She does not seem to remember me! Good day! I'm in a hurry!" He leaped into the pony-cart.

"Barset!" he cried, and the same moment they were off at speed, for Simon saw something fresh was up.

"Drive like Jehu," panted Richard. "Let's see what the blessed pony can do! Every instant is precious."

Never asking the cause of his haste, old Simon did drive like Jehu, and never had the pony gone with a better will: evidently he believed speed was wanted, and knew he had it to give.

No hoofs came clamping on the road behind them. They reached the town in safety, and Richard cashed his cheque-the more easily that Simon, a well-known man in Barset, was seen waiting for him in his trap outside. The eager, anxious look of Richard, and the way he clutched at the notes, might otherwise have waked suspicion. As it was, it only waked curiosity.

When the man whom Richard had decoyed, appeared at length before his master, whose repeated ringing had brought the butler first; and when sir Wilton, after much swearing on his, and bewilderment on the man's part, made out the trick played on him, his wrath began to evaporate in amusement: he was outwitted and outmanoeuvred-but by his own son! and even in the face of such an early outbreak of hostilities, he could not help being proud of him. He burst into a half cynical laugh, and dismissed the men-to vain speculation on the meaning of the affair.

Simon would have had Richard send the bank-notes by post, and stay with him a week or two; but Richard must take them himself; no other way seemed safe. Nor could he possibly rest until he had seen his mother, and told her all. He said nothing to his grandfather of his recognition by sir Wilton, and what followed: he feared he might take the thing in his own hands, and go to sir Wilton.

Questioning his grandfather, he learned that Barbara was at home, but that he had seen her only once. She had one day appeared suddenly at the smithy door, with Miss Brown all in a foam. She asked about Richard, wheeled her mare, and was off homeward, straight as an arrow-for he went to the corner,