There & Back. George MacDonald
spoke in book-fashion: he was speaking about books, and to a social superior! he was not really pompous.
“Well, if my father should come to see the thing as I do, I will let you know. Then will be the time for a definite understanding!”
“The best way would be that I should come and work for a set time: by the progress I made, and what I cost, you could judge.”
Lestrange rang the bell, and ordered the attendant to take the young man to his grandfather.
The two wandered together over the grounds, and Richard saw much to admire and wonder at, but nothing to approach the hall or the library.
On their way home, Simon, to his grandson’s surprise, declared himself in favour of his working at the Mortgrange library. But the idea tickled his fancy so much, that Richard wondered at the oddity of his grandfather’s behaviour.
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