CHAPTER XL.
_IN LONDON_.
It was into the first of the London fogs of the season that Richard,
after a slow parliamentary journey, got out of his third-class carriage,
at the great dim station. He took his portmanteau in one hand, and his
bag of tools in the other, and went to look for an omnibus. How terribly
dull the streets were! and how terribly dull and commonplace all inside
him! Into the far dark, the splendour of life, Barbara, had vanished!
Various memories of her, now this look, now that, now this attire, now
that--a certain button half torn from her riding habit--the feeling of
her foot in his hand as he lifted her to Miss Brown's back--would enter
his heart like the proclamation of a queen on a progress through her
dominions. The way she drove the nails into her mare's hoof; the way she
would put her hand on his shoulder as she slid from the saddle; the
commanding love with which she spoke to the great animal, and the way
Miss Brown received it; the sweet coaxing respect she showed his
blacksmith-grandfather; the tone of her voice when she said _God_;--a
thousand attendant shadows glided in her queen-procession, one after the
other in single file, through his brain, and his heart, and his every
power. He forgot the omnibus, and went tramping through the dreary
streets with his portmanteau and a small bag of tools--he had sent home
his heavier things before--thinking ever of Barbara, and not scorning
himself for thinking of her, for he thought of her as true lady herself
would never scorn to be thought of by honest man. No genuine unselfish
feeling is to be despised either by its subject or its object. That
Barbara was lovely, was no reason why Richard should not love her! that
she was rich, was no reason why he should forget her! She came into his
life as a star ascends above the horizon of the world: the world cannot
say to it, "Go down, star." Yea, Richard's star raised him as she rose.
In her presence he was at once rebuked and uplifted. She was a power
within him. He could not believe in God, but neither could he think
belief in such a God as she believed in, degrading. He said to himself
that everything depended on the kind of God believed in; and that the
kind of God depended on the kind of woman. He wondered how many ideas of
God there might be, for every one who believed in him must have a
different idea. "Some of them must be nearer right than others!" he said
to himself--nor perceived that he was beginning to entertain the notion
of a real God. For he saw that the notions of the best men and women must
be convergent, and was not far from thinking that such lines must point
to some object, rather than an empty centre: the idea of the best men and
women must be a believable idea, might be a true idea, might therefore be
a real existence. He had not yet come to consider the fact, that the best
of men said he knew God; that God was like himself, only greater; that
whoever would do what he told him should know that God, and know that he
spoke the truth concerning him; that he had come from him to witness of
him that he was truth and love. Richard had indeed started on a path
pointing thitherward, but as yet all concerning the one necessary entity
was vaguest speculation with him. He did feel, however, that to give in
to Barbara altogether, would not make him a believer such as Barbara. On
the other hand, he was yet far from perceiving that no man is a believer,
let him give his body to be burned, except he give his will, his life to
the Master. No man is a believer with whom he and his father are not
first; no man, in a word, who does not obey him, that is, who does not do
what he said, and says. It seems preposterous that such definition should
be necessary; but thousands talk about him for one that believes in him;
thousands will do what the priests and scribes say he commands, for one
who will search to find what he says that he may do it--who will take his
orders from the Lord himself, and not from other men claiming either
knowledge or authority. A man must come up to the Master, hearken to his
word, and do as he says. Then he will come to know God, and to know that
he knows him.
When he stopped thinking of Barbara, all was dreary about Richard. But he
did not once say to himself, "She does not love me!" did not once ask,
"Does she love me?" He said, "She cares for me; she is good to me! I wish
I believed as she does, that I might hope to meet her again in the house
of the one Father!"
It was Saturday night, and he had to go through a weekly market, a
hurrying, pushing, loitering, jostling crowd, gathered thick about the
butchers' and fishmongers' shops, the greengrocers' barrows, and the
trays upon wheels with things laid out for sale. Suddenly a face flashed
upon him, and disappeared. He was not sure that it was Alice's, but it
suggested Alice so strongly that he turned and tried to overtake it.
Impeded by his luggage, however, which caught upon hundreds of legs, he
soon saw the attempt hopeless. Then with pain he remembered that he had
not her address, and did not know how to communicate with her. He longed
to learn why she had left him without a word, what her repeated avoidance
of him meant; far more he desired to know where she was that he might
help her, and how she fared. But Barbara was her friend! Barbara knew her
address! He would ask her to send it him! He hardly thought she would,
for she was in the secret of Alice's behaviour, but, joy to think, it
would be a reason for writing to her! His heart gave a bound in his
bosom. Who could tell but she might please to send him the fan-wind of a
letter now and then, keeping the door, just a chink of it, open between
them, that the voice of her slave might reach her on the throne of her
loveliness! He walked the rest of the way with a gladder heart; he was no
longer without a future; there was something to do, and something to wait
for! Days are dreary unto death which wrap no hope in their misty folds.
His uncle and aunt received him with more warmth than he had ever known
them show. They were in good spirits about him, for they had all the time
been receiving news of him and Barbara, with not a word of Alice, from
old Simon. Jane's heart swelled with the ambition that her boy should as
a working-man gain the love of a well born girl, and reward her by making
her _my lady_.
I do not think Mrs. Tuke could have loved a son of her own body more than
this son of her sister; but she was constantly haunted with a vague
uneasiness about the possible consequences to herself and her husband of
what she had done, and the obstacles that might rise to prevent his
restoration; and this uneasiness had its share both in repressing the
show of her love, and in making her go to church so regularly. Her
pleasure in going was not great, but she was not the less troubled that
Richard did not care about going. She was still in the land of bullocks
and goats; she went to church with the idea that she was doing something
for God in going. It is always the way. Until a man knows God, he seeks
to obey him by doing things he neither commands nor cares about; while
the things for the sake of which he sent his son, the man regards as of
little or no consequence. What the son says about them, he takes as a
matter of course for him to say, and for himself to neglect.
Mrs. Tuke noted, the next day, that, as often almost as he was still, a
shadow settled on Richard's face, and he looked lost and sad: but it only
occurred to her that of course he must miss Barbara, never that he
cherished no hope such as she would have counted hope. She took it almost
as an omen of final success when in the evening he asked her if she would
not like him to go to church with her. He felt as if in church he would
be nearer Barbara, for he knew that now she went often. But alas, while
there he sat, he felt himself drifting farther and farther from her! The
foolish utterances of the parson made him deeply regret that he had gone.
While he believed, or at least was willing to believe, that they
misrepresented Christianity, they awoke all his old feelings of
instinctive repulsion, and overclouded his discrimination. Almost as
little could he endure the unnature as the untruth of what he heard. It
had no ring of reality, no spark of divine fire, no appealing radiance of
common sense, little of any verity at all. There was in it, as nearly as
possible, nothing at all to mediate between mind and mind, between truth
and belief, between God and his children. The clergyman was not a
hypocrite--far from it! He was in some measure even a devout man. But in
his whole presentation of God and our relation to him, there was neither
thought nor phrase germane to sunrise or sunset, to the firmament or the
wind or the grass or the trees; nothing that came to the human soul as
having a reality true as that of the world but higher; as holding with
the life lived in it, with the hopes and necessities of the heart and
mind. If "the hope of the glory of God" must be fashioned in like sort,
then were the whole affair of creation and redemption both dull and
desperate. There was no glow, no enthusiasm in the man--neither could
there be, with the notions he held. His God suggested a police
magistrate--and not a just one.
Richard would gladly have left the place, and wandered up and down in the
drizzle until, the service over, his mother should appear; but for her
sake he sat out the misery.
"The man," he said to himself, "does not give us one peg on which to hang
the love of God that he tells us we ought to feel! Love a God like that!
If he were as good as my mother, I would love him! But we have all to
look out to protect ourselves from him! Mr. Parson, there's no such being
as you jabber about! It puzzles me to think what my mother gets from
you."
He had written his letter to Barbara, and when they came out he posted
it. A long, long time of waiting followed; but no waiting brought any
answer. Lady Ann had dropped a hint, and Mr. Wylder had picked it up, a
hint delicate, but forcible enough to make him do what he had never done
before--keep an outlook on the letters that came for his daughter. When
Richard's arrived, it did not look to him that of a gentleman. The
writing was good, but precise; it was sealed with red wax, but the
impression was sunk: a proper seal had not been used! Especially where
his own family was concerned, Mr. Wylder was not the most delicate of
men! he opened the letter, and in it found what he called a rigmarole of
poetry and theology! "Confound the fellow!" he said to himself. Lady Ann
did well to warn him! There should be no more of this! The scatter-brain
took after her mother! He would give it her hot!
But he neither gave it her hot, nor gave her the letter; he did not say a
word. He feared the little girl he pretended to protect, and knew that if
he entered the lists with her, she would be too much for him. But he did
not understand that the mean in him dared not confront the noble in his
child. So Richard's letter only had it hot; it went into the fire, and
Bab never read the petition of her poor friend.
The next morning Richard went to the shop, and fell to the first job that
came to his hand. He acquainted his father with Lestrange's proposal in
regard to the library: Mr. Tuke would have him accept it.
"You shall have all it brings," he said.
"I don't want the money!" returned Richard.
"But I want the honour of the thing," replied his uncle. "You answered
the young gentleman sharply: you had better let me write!"
Richard made no objection. He would gladly keep the door open to any
place where the shadow of Barbara might fall, and was willing therefore
to pocket the offence of his causeless dismissal. But no notice was taken
of Tuke's letter, and a gulf of negation seemed to yawn between the
houses.
Thus was initiated a dreary time for Richard. Now first he began to know
what unhappiness was. The seeming loveless weather that hung over the
earth and filled the air, was in joyless harmony with his feelings. But
had his trouble fallen in a more genial season, it would have been worse.
He had never been with Barbara in the winter, and it did not seem so
unnatural to be without her now. Had it been summer, all the forms of
earth and air would have brought to him the face and voice and motion of
Barbara; and yet the soul would have been gone from them. The world would
have been worse dead then than now in the winter. Barbara had been the
soul of it--more than a sun to it.
He could not, however, dead as the world seemed, remain a moment indoors
after his work was done. Whatever sort the weather, out he must go, often
on the Thames, heedless of cold or wind or rain. His mother grew anxious
about him, attributed his unrest to despair, and feared she might have to
tell him her secret. She recoiled from setting free what she had kept in
prison for so many years. In her own mind she had settled his coming of
age as the term of his humiliation, and she would gladly keep to it. She
shrunk from losing him, from breaking up the happiness that lay in seeing
him about the house. But that her husband had insisted on accustoming
themselves to live without him, she would hardly have consented to his
late absence. She shrunk also from the measures necessary to reinstate
him, and from the commotion those measures must occasion. It was so much
easier to go on as they were doing! and delay could not prejudice his
right! In fact, most of the things that made her take the baby, were
present still, making her desire to keep the youth. A day would come when
she must part with him, but that day was not yet! She dreaded uncaging
her secret, because of the change it must work, whether immediate action
were taken or not. She never suspected that anyone knew or surmised it
but herself, or that she had to beware of any tongue but her own.
Her husband left the matter entirely to her. It was her business, he
said, from the first, and he would let it be hers to the last.
