He always spoke as if lady Ann’s children were
none of his. Her ladyship had taught him to do
so, for she always said, “My children!”
That night he slept with an easier mind. He had
put the deed off and off, regarding it as his abdication;
but now it was done he felt more comfortable.
Wingfold suspected in the paper some provision for
Richard, but could imagine no reason for letting it
lie unopened until a year should have passed from
the baronet’s death. Troubling himself nothing,
however, about what was not his business, he put the
paper carefully aside—but where he must
see it now and then, lest it should pass from his mind,
and with sir Wilton’s permission, told his wife
what he had undertaken concerning it, that she might
carry it out if he were prevented from doing so.
Time went on. Communication grew yet less between
Mr. Wylder and his family. He had returned to
certain old habits, and was spending money pretty
fast in London. Failing to make himself a god
in the house, he forsook it, and was rapidly losing
this world’s chance of appreciating a woman
whose faults were to his as new wine to dirty water.
In the fourth year, Richard wrote to his father, through
his grandfather of course, informing him he had got
his B.A. degree, and was waiting further orders.
The baronet was heartily pleased with the style of
his letter, and in the privacy of his own room gave
way to his delight at the thought of his wife’s
approaching consternation and chagrin. At the
same time, however, he was not a little uneasy in
prospect of the denouement. For the eyes of his
wife had become almost a terror to him. Their
grey ice, which had not grown clearer as it grew older,
made him shiver. Why should the stronger so often
be afraid of the weaker? Sometimes, I suppose,
because conscience happens to side with the weaker;
sometimes only because the weaker is yet able to make
the stronger, especially if he be lazy and a lover
of what he calls peace, worse than uncomfortable.
The baronet dared not present his son to his wife except
in the presence of at least one stranger. He
wrote to Richard, appointing a day for his appearance
at Mortgrange.
THE HEIR.
It was a lovely morning when Richard, his heart beating
with a hope whose intensity of bliss he had never
imagined, stopped at the station nearest to Mortgrange,
and set out to walk there in the afternoon sun.
June folded him in her loveliness of warmth and colour.
The grass was washed with transparent gold: he
saw both the gold and the green together, but unmingled.
Often had he walked the same road, a contented tradesman;
a gentleman now, with a baronet to his father, he
loved, and knew he must always love the tradesman-uncle
more than the baronet-father. He was much more
than grateful to his father for his ready reception
of him, and his care of his education; but he could
not be proud of him as of his mother and his aunt
and uncle and his grandfather. He held it one
of God’s greatest gifts to come of decent people;
and if in his case the decency was on one side only,
it was the more his part to stop the current of transmitted
evil, and in his own person do what he might to annihilate
it!
