The mere idea of going to college, and thus taking a step nearer to Barbara, began immediately to better his health. It gave him many a happy thought, many a cottage and castle in the air, with more of a foundation than he knew. But his mother did not revert to it; and one day suddenly the thought came to Richard that perhaps she meant to apply to sir Wilton for the means of sending him. Castle and cottage fell in silent ruin. His soul recoiled from the idea with loathing--as much for his mother's sake as his own. Having married his reputed father, she must have no more relation, for good any more than for bad, with sir Wilton--least of all for his sake! To her he was dead; and ought to be as dead as disregard could make him! So, at least, thought Richard. He was sorry he had confessed he should like to go to Oxford. If his mother again alluded to the thing, he would tell her he had changed his mind, and would not interrupt the exercise of his profession as surgeon to old books.

CHAPTER XLVIII. _DEATH THE DELIVERER_.

The spring advanced; the days grew a little warmer; and at length, partly from economic considerations, it was determined they should go home. When they reached London, they found a great difference in the weather: it cannot be said she owes her salubrity to her climate.

Fog and drizzle, frost and fog, were the embodiment of its unvarying mutability. At once Richard was worse, and dared not think, for his mother's sake, and the labour she had spent upon him, of going to the next popular concert, if indeed those delights had not ceased for the season. But he ought to try, for he could do that in the middle of the day, at least to get news of Arthur Manson. He dreaded hearing that he was no more in this world. The cold wintry weather, and the return to poor and spare nourishment caused by Richard's illness, must have been hard upon him! It was a continual sorrow to Richard that he had not been able to get him his new clothes before he was taken ill. So the first morning he felt it possible, he took his way to the city. There he learned that the company had dispensed with Arthur's services, because his attendance had become so irregular.

"You see, sir," said the porter, "the gov'nors they don't think no more of a man than they do of a horse: so long as he can hold the shafts up an' lean agin the collar, he's money; when he can't no longer, he's dirt!"

Sad at heart, Richard set out for Clerkenwell. He was ill able for the journey, but Arthur was dying! He would brave the mother for the sake of the son! He got into an omnibus which took him a good part of the way, and walked the rest. When at length he looked up at the dreary house, he saw the blinds of the windows drawn down. A pang of fear went through his heart, and an infilial murmur awoke in his brain:--why was he, on whom those poor lives almost depended, made feeble as themselves, and incapable of helping them? After all his hoping and trusting, _could_ there be a G.o.d in the earth and things go like that? The look of things seemed the truth of things; the seen denied the unseen. Cold and hunger and desertion; ugly, mocking failure; heartless comfort, and hopeless misery, made up the law of life! Moody and wretched he went up the stair to the darkened floor.

When he knocked at the front room, that in which Alice slept with her mother, it was opened by Alice, looking more small and forlorn than he had yet seen her, with hollower cheeks and larger eyes, and a smile to make an angel weep.

"Richard!" she cried, with a voice in which the very gladness sounded like pain. A pink flush rose in her poor wasted cheeks, and she lay still in his arms as if she had gone to live there.

He could not, for pity, speak one word.

"How ill you look!" she murmured. "I knew you must be ill! I thought you might be dead! Oh, G.o.d _is_ good to leave you to us!" Then bursting into tears, "How wicked of me," she sobbed, "to feel anything like gladness, with my mother lying there, and me not able to do anything for her, and not knowing what's become of her, or how things are going with her!--We shall never see her again!"

"Don't say that, Alice! Never say _never_ about anything except it be bad. You can't be _sure_, you know. You can't be sure of anything that's not in your very mouth--and then sometimes you can't swallow it!--But how's Arthur?"

"He'll know all about it soon!" she answered, with a touch of bitterness. "If he had been left me, we should have got along somehow.

He would have lain in bed, and I would have worked beside him! How I could have worked for _him_! But he's past hope now! He'll never get up again."

"Oh G.o.d," cried Richard in his heart, where an agony of will wrestled with doubt, "if thou art, thou wilt hear me, and take pity on her, and on us all!--I dare not pray, Alice," he went on aloud, "that he may live, but I will pray G.o.d to be with him. It would be poor kindness to want him left with us, if he is taking him where he will be well. May I go and see him?"

"Surely, Richard.--But mayn't I let him know first? The surprise might be too much for him."

Their talk had waked him, however, and he knew his brother's voice.

"Richard! Richard!" he cried, so loud that it startled Alice: he had not spoken above a whisper for days. Richard opened his door, and went in. But when he saw Arthur, he could scarcely recognize him, he was so wasted. His eyes stood out like b.a.l.l.s from his sunken cheeks, and the smile with which he greeted him was all teeth, like the helpless smile of a skull. Overcome with tenderness, the stronger that he would have pa.s.sed him in the street as one unknown, Richard stooped and kissed his forehead, then stood speechless, holding the thin leaf of a hand that strained his. Arthur tried to speak, but his cough came on, and his brother begged him to be silent.

"I will go into the next room with Alice," he said, "and come to you again. I shall see you often now, I hope. I've been ill or I should have been here fifty times."

In the next room lay the motionless form of the unmotherly mother.

A certain something of human grace had returned to her countenance.

Richard did not like looking at her; he felt that, not loving her, he had no right to let his eyes rest on her. But she had been sinned against like his own mother: he must not fail her with what sympathy she might claim!

"Don't think hard things of her," said Alice, as if she knew what he was thinking. "She had not the strength of some people. I believe myself she could not help it. She had been used to everything she wanted!"

"I pity her heartily," answered Richard.

She threw her arms round his neck, and clung to him as if she would never more let him go.

"But what am I to do?" she said, releasing him. "If I stay at home to nurse Arthur, we must both die of hunger. If I go away, there is n.o.body to do anything for him!"

"I wish I could stay with him!" returned Richard. "But I've been so long ill that I have no money, and I don't know when I shall have any. I have just one s.h.i.+lling in my possession. Take it, dear."

"I can't take your last s.h.i.+lling, Richard!"

"There's no fear of me," he said; "I shall have everything I want. It makes me ashamed to think of it. You must just creep on for a while as best you can, while I think what to do. Only there's the funeral!"

Alice gave a cry choked by a sob.

"There is no help!" she said in a voice of despair. "The parish is all that is left us!"

"It don't matter much," rejoined Richard. "For my part I don't care a paring what becomes of my old clothes when I've done with them! You needn't think, whether she be anywhere or nowhere, that she cares how her body gets put under the earth! Don't trouble about it, Alice; it really is nothing. I would come to the funeral, but I don't see how I can. I don't know now what I shall say to my mother!--Tell Arthur I hope to see him again soon; I must not stop now. I won't forget you, Alice--not for an hour, I think. Beg some one in the house to go in to him now and then while you are away. I shall soon do something to cheer him up a bit. Good-night, dear!"

With a heavy heart Richard went. It was all he could do to get home before dark, having to walk all the way. His mother was much distressed to see him so exhausted; but he managed not to tell her what he had been about. He had some tea and went to bed, and there remained all the next day. And while he was in bed, it came to him clear and plain what he must do. It was certain that for a long time he could do nothing for Arthur and Alice out of his own pocket. Even if he got to work at once, he could not take his wages as before, seeing his parents had spent upon him almost all they had saved!

But there was one who _ought_ to help them! Specially in such sore need had they a right to the saving help of their own father! He would go to his father and their father--and as the words rose in his mind, he wondered where he had heard something like them before.

The next day he begged his father and mother to let him spend a week or two with his grandfather.

CHAPTER XLIX. _THE CAVE IN THE FIRE_.

The day after, well wrapt from the cold, he took his place in a slow train, and at the station was heartily welcomed by his grandfather, who had come with his pony-cart to take him home. Settled in the room once occupied by Alice, he felt like a usurper, a robber of the helpless: he had left her in misery and wretchedness, and was in the heart of the comfort that had once been hers. He had to tell himself that it was foolish; that he was there for her sake.

He took his grandfather at once into his confidence, begging him not to let his mother know: and Simon, who had in former days experienced something of the hardness of his true-hearted daughter, entered into the thing with a brooding kind of smile. He saw no reason why Richard should not make the attempt, but shook his head at the prospect of success.

Doubtless the baronet thought he had done all that could be required of him! He would have Richard rest a day before encountering him but when he heard in what condition he had left Alice and her brother, he said no more, but the next morning had his trap ready to drive him to Mortgrange.

Richard's heart beat fast as he entered the lodge-gate, and walked up to the front door. After a moment's bewilderment the servant who answered his ring recognized him, and expressed concern that he looked so ill.

When he asked to see sir Wilton, the man, thinking he came to resume the work so suddenly abandoned, said he was in the library, having his morning cigar.

"Then I'll just step in!" said Richard; and the footman gave way as to a member of the household.

Sir Wilton, now an elderly and broken man, sat in the same chair, and in the same att.i.tude, as when Richard, a new-born and ugly child, had, in the arms of his aunt, his first interview with him, nearly one and twenty years before. The relation between them had not developed a hair's-breadth since that moment, and Richard, partly from the state of his health, could not, with all the courage he could gather, help quailing a little before the expected encounter; but he remained outwardly quiet and seemingly cool. The sun was not s.h.i.+ning into the room, and it was rather dark. Sir Wilton sat with his back to the one large bay-window, and Richard received its light on his face as he entered. He stood an instant, hesitating. His father did not speak, but sat looking straight at him, staring indeed as at something portentous--much as when first he saw the ugly apparition of his infant heir. Richard's illness had brought out, in the pallor and emaciation of his countenance, what likeness there was in him to his mother; and, strange to say, at the moment when the door opened to admit him, sir Wilton was thinking of the monstrous baby his wife had left him, and wondering if the creature were still alive, and as hideous as twenty years before.

It was not _very_ strange, however. Sir Wilton had been annoyed with his wife that morning, and it was yet a bitterer thing not to be able to hurt her in return, which, because of her cold imperturbability, was impossible, say what he might. As often, therefore, as he sat in silent irritation with her, the thought of his lost child never failed to present itself. What a power over her ladys.h.i.+p would he not possess, what a plough and harrow for her frozen equanimity, if only he knew where the heir to Mortgrange was! He was d.a.m.ned ugly, but the uglier the better! If he but had him, he swore he would have a merry time, with his lady's pride on its marrow-bones! After so many years the poor lad might, ugly as he was, turn out presentable, and if so, then, by heaven, that smooth-faced gentleman, Arthur, should s.h.i.+ft for himself!

Suddenly appeared Richard, with his mother in his face; and before his father had time to settle what the deuce it could mean, the apparition spoke.

"I am very sorry to intrude upon you, sir Wilton," he said, "but--"

Here he paused.

"--But you've got something to tell me--eh?" suggested sir Wilton. He was on the point of adding, "If it be where you got those eyes, I may have to ask you to sit down!" but he checked himself, and said only, "You'd better make haste, then; for the devil is at the door in the shape of my d.a.m.ned gout!"

"I came to tell you, sir Wilton," replied Richard, plunging at once into the middle of things, which was indeed the best way with sir Wilton, "about a son of yours--"

"What!" cried sir Wilton, putting his hands on the arms of his chair and leaning forward as if on the point of rising to his feet. "Where the devil is he? What do you know about him?"

"He is lying at the point of death--dying of hunger, I may say."