There & Back. George MacDonald
and was treating with certain solutions, in preparation for binding them, when Lestrange came in one morning, accompanied by the curate of the parish. His eyes fell on a loose title-page which he happened to know.
“What on earth are you doing?” he cried. “You will destroy that book! By Jove!—You little know what you’re about!”
“I do know what I am about, sir. I shall do the book nothing but good,” answered Richard. “It could not have lasted many years without what I am doing.”
“Leave it alone,” said Lestrange. “I must ask some one. The treatment is too dangerous.”
“Excuse me, sir; the treatment is by no means dangerous. After this bath, I shall take it through one of thin size, to help the paper to hold together. The book has suffered much, both from damp and insects.”
“No matter!” answered Lestrange imperiously. “I will not have you meddle further with that volume.—Would you believe it, Hardy,” he went on, turning to the curate, “it is that translation of Ovid he is experimenting upon!”
“I beg your pardon, I am not experimenting,” said Richard.
“I hardly think it is such a very rare book!” replied the curate. “I believe it could be replaced!”
“Ah, you don’t know, I see! I thought I had shown you!” returned Lestrange excitedly. “Look there!”
He pointed to the title-page, which was lying on the table.
“I see!” said Hardy. “It is a first edition—in black letter—of Arthur Golding’s Ovid!”
“But you don’t look! Why don’t you look? Have you no eyes for that faded ink just under the title?”
“Why! What’s this? Gul. Shaksper!—Is it possible!”
“You find it hard to believe your eyes, and well you may!—There, Tuke! I told you you didn’t know what you were doing!”
“I always examine the title-page of a book,” answered Richard. “You must allow me to do as I see fit, Mr. Lestrange, or I give up the job.”
“You undertook to work for a year, if required!”
“I did not undertake to receive orders as to my mode of working. I care for books far too much for that. Besides, I have my character to see to! I warn you that if I do not go on with that volume, it will be ruined.”
“You don’t consider the money you risk!—That name makes the book worth hundreds at least.”
“It is the greatest of names! Only that name was not written by him who owned it!”
“What do you know about it!” said Lestrange rudely.
“Are you an expert?” asked the curate.
“By no means,” answered Richard; “but I have been a good deal with old books, and my impression is you have got there one of the Ireland forgeries!”
“I believe it to be quite genuine!” said Lestrange.
“If it be, there is the more reason in what I am doing, sir.”
Lestrange turned abruptly to the curate, saying—“Come along, Hardy! I can’t bear to see the butchery!”
“Depend on it,” returned the curate laughing, “the surgeon knows his knife!—You know what you’re about, don’t you, Mr. Tuke?”
“If I did not, sir, I wouldn’t meddle with a book like that, forgery or no forgery! You should see the quantities of old print I’ve destroyed in learning how to save such books!—This is no vile body to experiment upon!”
“Mr. Lestrange, you may trust that man!” said the curate.
CHAPTER XV. BARBARA WYLDER
It was the height of the season, and sir Wilton and lady Ann were in London—I cannot say enjoying themselves, for I doubt if either of them ever enjoyed self, or anything else. Their daughters were at home, in the care of the governess. Theodora had been out a year or two, but preferred Mortgrange to London. She was one of the few girls—perhaps not very few—who imagine themselves uglier than they are. Miss Malliver, the governess, was a lady of uncertain age, for whom lady Ann had an uncertain liking. The younger girl, her pupil, was named Victoria, but commonly called Vic, and not uncommonly Vixen. The younger boy was at school, where they were constantly threatening to send him home. He had been already dismissed from Eton.
In their elder son, Arthur, his parents had as perfect a confidence as such parents could have in any son.
The little lady that rode the great mare, and sat in the beech-tree, was at present their guest—as she often was, in a fluctuating or intermittent fashion. She lived in the neighbourhood, but was more at Mortgrange than at home; one consequence of which was, that, as would-be-clever Miss Malliver phrased it, the house was very much B. Wyldered. Nor was that the first house the little lady had bewildered, for she was indeed an importation from a new colony rather startling to sedate old England. Her father, a younger son, had unexpectedly succeeded to the family-property, a few miles from Mortgrange. He was supposed to have made a fortune in New Zealand, where Barbara was born and brought up. They had been home nearly two years, and she was almost eighteen. Absurd rumours were abroad concerning their wealth, but there were no great signs of wealth about the place. Wylder Hall was kept up, and its life went on in good style, it is true, but mainly because the old servants perpetuated the customs of the house.
The squire was said to have shared in some of the roughest phases of colonial life. Whether he was better or worse for falling in love with the money of an older colonist, and marrying his daughter, it is certain that, for a time at least, he grew a shade or two more respectable. Far from being a woman of refinement, she had more character and more strength than he, and brought him, not indeed into the highways of wisdom, but into certain by-paths of prudence.
Upon his return to his native country, they were everywhere received; but had it not been for their reported wealth, I doubt if the ladies of the county, after some experience of her manners and speech, which were at times very rough, would have continued to call on Mrs. Wylder.
But everybody liked Barbara; and nobody could think how such a flower should have come of two such plants. She seemed to regard every one as of her own family. People were her property—hers to love! And her brain was as active as her heart, and constantly with it. She wanted to know what people thought and felt and imagined; what everything was; how a thing was done, and how it ought to be done. She seemed to understand what the animals were thinking, and what the flowers were feeling. She had from infancy spent the greater part of her life, both night and day, in the open air; and, having no companion, had sought the acquaintance of every live thing she saw—often to the disgust of her mother, and occasionally to the annoyance of her father. She was a child of the whole world, as the naiad is the child of the river, and the oread of the mountain. She could sit a horse’s bare back even better than a saddle, could guide him almost as well with a halter as with a bridle, and in general control him without either, though she had ridden more than one horse with terrible bit and spurs. She did not remember the time when she could not swim, and she tried her own running against every new horse, to find what he could do. Some highland girl might perhaps have beaten her, up hill, but I doubt it. She was so small that she looked fragile, but she had nerves such as few men can boast, and muscles like steel. It never occurred to her not to say what she thought, believed, or felt; she would show favour or dislike with equal readiness; and give the reason for anything she did as willingly as do the thing. She was a special favourite at Mortgrange. Not only did she bewitch the blasé man of the world, sir Wilton, but the cold eye of his lady would gleam a faint gleam at the thought of her dowry. Her father “prospected” a little for something higher than a mere baronetcy, but he had in no way interfered. Of herself, divine little savage, she would never have thought of love until she fell in love: a flower cannot know its own blossom until it comes. It did not yet interest her, and until it did, certainly marriage never would. Thus was she healthier-minded than any one born of society-parents, and brought up under the influences of nurse-morality, can well be.