There & Back, George MacDonald [early reader chapter books .TXT] 📗

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