CHAPTER XI.
_ALICE._
Soon after his visit to Mortgrange, the young bookbinder went home,
recalled at last by his parents. John Tuke was shocked with the hardness
and blackness of his hands, and called his wife's attention to them. She,
however, perhaps from nearer alliance with the smithy, professed to
regard their condition as by no means a serious matter. She could not,
nevertheless, quite conceal her regret, for she was proud of her boy's
hands.
Richard supposed of course that his father's annoyance came only from the
fear that his touch would be no longer sufficiently delicate for certain
parts of his work; and certainly, when he looked at them, he thought the
points of his fingers were broader than before, and was a little anxious
lest they should have lost something of their cunning. He did not know
that mechanical faculty, for fine work as well as rough, goes in general
with square-pointed fingers. Delicately tapered fingers, whatever they
may indicate in the way of artistic invention, are not the fingers of the
painter or the sculptor. The finest fingers of the tapering kind I have
ever seen, were those of a distinguished chemist of the last generation.
Eager to satisfy both his father and himself, that the hands of the
bookmender had not degenerated more than his skill could counteract,
Richard selected, from a few that were waiting his return, the book
worthiest of his labour, set to work, and by a thorough success quickly
effected his purpose.
He was now, however, anxious, before doing anything else, to learn all
that was known for the restoration and repair of the insides of books. In
this an old-bookseller, a friend of his father, was able to give him no
little help, putting him up to wrinkles not a few. Richard was surprised
to see how, with a penknife, on a bit of glass, he would pare the edge of
a scrap of paper to half the thickness, in order to place two such edges
together, and join them without a scar. He taught him how to clean
letterpress and engravings from ferruginous, fungous, and other kinds of
spots. He made him acquainted with a process which considerably
strengthened paper that had become weak in its cohesion; and when Richard
would make further experiment, he supplied him with valueless letterpress
to work upon. His time was thus more than ever occupied. For many weeks
he scarcely even read.
It was not long, however, before he bethought him that he must see
Arthur. He went the same evening to call on him, but found other people
in the house, who could tell him nothing about the family that had left.
His aunt said she had seen Alice once, and knew they were going, but did
not know where they were gone. Richard would have inquired at the house
in the City where Arthur was employed, but he did not know even the name
of the firm. Once, from the top of an omnibus, he saw him--in the same
shabby old comforter, looking feebler and paler and more depressed than
ever; but when he got down, he had lost sight of him, and though he ran
hither and thither, looking up this street and that, he recovered no
glimpse of him. The selfish mother and the wasting children came back to
him vividly as he walked sadly home.
He had counted Alice the nicest girl he had ever seen, but since going to
the country had not thought much about her; and now, since seeing the
fairy-like lady with the big brown mare, he had a higher idea of the
feminine. But although therefore he would not have thought the pale,
sweet-faced dressmaker quite so pleasing as before, he would, because of
the sad look into which her countenance always settled, have felt her
quite as interesting.
Richard had not yet arrived at any readiness to fall in love. It is well
when this readiness is delayed until the individuality is sufficiently
developed to have its own demands. I venture to think one cause of
unhappiness in marriages is, that each person's peculiar self, was not,
at the time of engagement, sufficiently grown for a natural selection of
the suitable, that is, the _correspondent;_ and that the development
which follows is in most cases the development of what is reciprocally
non-correspondent, and works for separation and not approximation. The
only thing to overcome this or any other disjunctive power, is
development in the highest sense, that is, development of the highest and
deepest in us--which can come only by doing right. The man who is growing
to be one with his own nature, that is, one with God who is the
_naturing_ nature, is coming nearer and nearer to every one of his
fellow-beings. This may seem a long way round to love, but it is the only
road by which we can arrive at true love of any kind; and he who does not
walk in it, will one day find himself on the verge of a gulf of hate.
Individuality, forestalled by indifference, had no chance of keeping sir
Wilton and lady Ann apart, but certainly had done nothing to bring them
together. Where all is selfishness on both sides, what other
correspondences may exist will hardly come into play. The loss of the
unloved heir had perhaps done a little to approximate them; but they
speedily ceased to hold any communication of ideas on the matter. As they
did nothing to recover him, so they seemed to take almost no thought as
to his existence or non-existence. If he were alive, neither father nor
stepmother had the least desire to discover him. Answering honestly, each
would have chosen that he should remain unheard of. As to the possibility
of his dying in want, or being brought up in wickedness, that did not
trouble either of them. His stepmother did not think the more tenderly of
another woman's child that she cared for her own children only because
they were hers. If you could have got the idea into the pinched soul of
lady Ann, that the human race is one family, it would but have enhanced
her general dislike, her feeble enmity to humanity. When she did or said
anything to displease him, sir Wilton would sometimes hint at a new
advertisement, but she did not much heed the threat. On the whole,
however, they had got on better than might have been expected, partly in
virtue of her sharp tongue and her thick skin, which combination of the
offensive and defensive put sir Wilton at a disadvantage: however sharp
his retort might be, she never felt it, but went on; and harping does not
always mean such pleasant music, that you want to keep the harper awake.
She had brought him four children--Arthur, the one whose acquaintance
Richard had made, a younger brother who promised foully, and two
girls--the elder common in feature and slow in wits, but with eyes and a
heart; the younger clever and malicious.
One stormy winter night, as Richard was returning from a house in Park
Crescent, to which he had carried home a valuable book restored to
strength and some degree of aged beauty, from one of the narrow openings
on the east side of Regent Street, came a girl, fighting with the wind
and a weak-ribbed umbrella, and ran buffeted against him, notwithstanding
his endeavour to leave her room. The collision was very slight, but she
looked up and begged his pardon. It was Alice. Before he could speak, she
gave a cry, and went from him in blind haste as fast as she could go; but
with the fierce wind, her perturbation, and the unruliness of the
umbrella, which she was vainly trying to close that she might run the
better, she struck full against a lamp-post, and stood like one
stunned and on the point of falling. Richard, however, was close behind
her, and put an arm round her. She did not resist; she was indeed but
half-conscious. The same moment he saw a cab and hailed it. The man heard
and came. Richard lifted her into it, and got in after her. But Alice
came to herself, got up, and leaning out of the cab on the street side,
tried to open the door. Richard caught her, drew her back, and made her
sit down again.
"Richard! Richard!" she cried, as she yielded to his superior strength,
and burst into tears, "where are you taking me?"
"Wherever you like, Alice. You shall tell the cabman yourself. What is
the matter with you? Don't be angry with me. It is not my fault that I
have not been to see you and Arthur. You went away, and nobody could tell
me where to find you! Give the cabman your address, Alice."
"I'm not going home," sobbed Alice.
"Where are you going, then? I will go with you. You're not fit to go
anywhere alone! I'm afraid you're badly hurt!"
"No, no! Do let me out. Indeed, indeed, you must!"
"Well, then, I won't! You'll drop down and be left to the police! It's
horrible to think of you out in such a night! Come home with me. If you
are in any trouble, my mother will help you."
Here Alice, who had yielded to the pressure with which Richard held her,
broke from him, and pushed him away. Richard put his other arm across,
and laid hold of the door of the cab, telling the man to get up on his
box, and have a little patience. He obeyed, and Richard turned again to
Alice.
"Richard," she said, "your mother would kill me!"
"Nonsense!" he rejoined; "what a fancy! My mother!"
"I've seen her since you went. She made me promise--"
But there Alice stopped, and Richard could get from her nothing but
entreaties to be let out.
"If you don't," she said at last, growing desperate, "I will scream."
"Let me take you at least, then, a little nearer where you want to go,"
pleaded Richard.
"No! no I set me down."
"Tell me where you live."
"I daren't."
"I must see my old friend, Arthur! and why shouldn't I see his sister? My
father and mother ain't tyrants! They know what that would make of me!
They let me go where I please, or give a good reason why I should not."
"Oh, they'll do that fast enough!" returned Alice, in a tone of mingled
despair and scorn. "But," she added immediately, "the worst of it is,
they'll be in the right. Let me out, Richard, or I shall hate you!"
But with the word she dropped her head on his shoulder, and sobbed as if
her heart would sob its last.
He made repeated attempts to soothe her, but, as he made them, he felt
them foolish, for he saw that nothing would alter her determination to be
set down.
"Must I leave you, then, on this very spot?" he said.
"Yes, yes! here--here!" she answered, and rose with apparent eagerness to
get away from him.
He got out, and turned to her, but she did not accept his offered help.
"Won't you shake hands with me?" he said. "I did not mean to offend you!"
She answered nothing, but hurried away a step or two, then turned and
lifted her arms as if to embrace him, but turned again instantly, and
fled away among the shadows of the wildly flickering lamps. By the time
he had paid the cabman, he saw it would be useless to follow, for she was
out of sight.
The wide street was almost deserted; its lamps shuddered flaring and
streaming and darkening in the fierce gusts of the wind. A vague army of
evil things seemed to start up and come crowding between him and Alice.
He turned homeward, with a sense of loss and a great sadness at his
heart, unable even to speculate as to the cause of Alice's behaviour. All
he knew was, that his mother had something to do with it. For the first
time since childhood, he felt angry with his mother.
"She fancies," he said to himself, "that I am in love with the girl, and
she thinks her not good enough for me! I'm not in love with her; but
_any_ good girl I cared for, I should count good enough! When my mother's
turn comes, off she goes to the rest of the social tyrants that look down
on a brother because he can do twenty things they can't! If the world
went out of gear, would _they_ make it go! I'll be fair whatever I be!
It'll be my mother's own fault if I fall in love with Alice! She has made
me pity her with all my heart--the poor, white thing!--so thin and
pinched, and such big eyes! It would be just bliss to have a creature
like that to trust you, so that you could comfort her! What can my mother
have said to her? She has made her awfully miserable, anyhow! Perhaps her
mother drinks!--What if she do! Alice don't!"
He was determined to have some explanation from his mother. But she
foiled him. The moment she saw what he meant, she turned away, listened
in silence, and spoke with a decision that savoured of anger.
"They're not people your father and I will have you know," she said,
without looking at him.
"But why, mother?" asked Richard.
"We're not bound to explain everything to you, Richard. It ought to be
enough that we _have_ a good reason."
"If it be a good reason, why shouldn't I know it, mother?" he persisted.
"Good things don't require to be hidden."
"That's very true; they do not."
"Then why hide this one?"
"Because it is not good."
"You said it was a good reason!"
"So it is."
"Good and not good! How can that be?" said Richard, with a great lack of
logic. By this time he ought to have been able to see that the worst of
facts may be the best of reasons.
His mother held her peace, knowing she was right, but not knowing how to
answer what she thought his cleverness.
"I mean to go and see them, mother," he said.
"You'll repent it, Richard. The woman is not respectable!"
"She won't bite me!"
"There's worse than biting!"
"I allow," pursued Richard, "she may take a drop too much; her nose does
look a little suspicious! But if she ain't what she should be, it's hard
lines Arthur and Alice should suffer for the sins of their mother."
"The Bible says the sins of the fathers are visited on the children."
"The Bible! If the Bible says what ain't right, are we to do it?"
"Richard, I'll have no such word spoken again in my house!" exclaimed his
mother.
"Are you going to turn me out, mother, because I say we should not do
what is wrong, whoever tells us to?"
"No, Richard! You said the Bible said what was wrong; and that's
blasphemy!"
"Didn't you say, mother, that the Bible said we ought to visit the sins
of the fathers on the children?"
"God forbid!" cried the poor woman, driven almost to distraction; "I said
nothing of the kind! That would be awful! What the Bible says is, that
God does so."
"Well, if God chooses, we must leave him to do as he chooses--not do
likewise!"
"Surely, surely, Richard! If _he_ does it, he knows what he's about, and
we don't."
"All right, mother! Then tell me where Arthur and Alice are gone. I want
to go and see them."
"I don't know. In fact, I took care not to know, that I mightn't be able
to tell you."
"But why?"
"Never mind why. I don't know where they are, and couldn't tell you if I
would."
Richard turned angrily away, and went to his room, weary and annoyed. In
the morning his mother said to him--
"Richard, I can't bear there should be any misunderstanding between you
and me! The moment you are one and twenty, ask me and I will tell you why
I would not have you knowing those people. Believe me, I was right to
stop it, for fear of what might follow."
"If you are afraid of my falling in love with a girl you don't think good
enough for me, you have taken the wrong way to keep me from thinking
about her, mother. You remember the costermonger whose family quarrelled
with him for marrying beneath him? If a girl be a good girl, she is good
for me, whether she be the daughter of the cats'-meat-man or of a royal
duke! I know that's not the way people who call themselves Christians
think! They want, of course, to keep up the selfishness of the breed!"
It was horribly rude, and Jane burst into tears. Richard's heart
softened. It is well our hearts are sometimes in advance of our
consciences--we are so slow to recognize injustice in defence of the
right! Richard's wrong to his mother was a lack of faith in her. Where he
did not understand and she would not explain, he did not even give her
the benefit of the doubt. He treated her just as many of us, calling
ourselves Christians, treat the Father--not in words, perhaps, or even in
definite thoughts, but in feelings and actions.
"You will be sorry for this one day, Richard!" she sobbed. "Whatever I do
is from care over you!"
"To wrong another for my sake, never can be any good to me. If money
wrong-got be a curse, so is any good wrong-got."
"You won't trust me, Richard! My own father is a blacksmith: why should I
look down upon a dressmaker?"
"That's just what I think, mother!--Why?"
"I don't!" returned Mrs. Tuke--and there she paused: another step might
bring her to the edge of the gulf!
Richard looked at her moodily for a moment, then turned away to the
workshop; where, after his ill success with his mother, he was hardly
less disinclined to challenge his father than before, for he knew him
inexpugnable.
