“There is little praise to be got from men for
that,” said Wingfold; “and I am sure Richard
does not seek any. He would help men to see that
the man who serves his neighbour, is the man whom the
Lord of the universe honours. An idle man, or
one busy only for himself, is like a lump of refuse
floating this way and that in the flux and reflux of
the sewer-tide of the world. Were Richard lord
of lands it would be absurd of him to give his life
to bookbinding; that would be to desert his neighbour
on those lands; but what better can he do now than
follow the trade by which he may at once earn his
living? To omit the question of possibility,—suppose
he read for the bar, would that bring him closer to
humanity? Would it be a diviner mode of life?
Is it a more honourable thing to win a cause—perhaps
for the wrong man—than to preserve an old
and valuable book? Will a man rank higher in the
kingdom that shall not end, because he has again and
again rendered unrighteousness triumphant? Would
Richard’s mind be as free in chambers as in the
workshop to search into truth, or as keen to suspect
its covert? Would he sit closer to the well-springs
of thought and aspiration in a barrister’s library,
than among the books by which he wins his bread?”
With eternity before them, and God at the head and
the heart of the universe, Richard and Barbara did
not believe in separation any more than in death.
He in London and she at Wylder Hall, they were far
more together than most unparted pairs.
Wingfold set himself to keep Barbara busy, giving
her plenty to read and plenty of work: her waiting
should be no loss of time to her if he could help
it! Among other things, he set her to teach his
boy where she thought herself much too ignorant:
he held, not only that to teach is the best way to
learn, but that the imperfect are the best teachers
of the imperfect. He thought this must be why
the Lord seems to regard with so much indifference
the many falsehoods uttered of and for him. When
a man, he said, agonized to get into other hearts
the thing dear to his own, the false intellectual
or even moral forms in which his ignorance and the
crudity of his understanding compelled him to embody
it, would not render its truth of none effect, but
might, on the contrary, make its reception possible
where a truer presentation would stick fast in the
door-way.
He made Richard promise to take no important step
for a year without first letting him know. He
was anxious he should have nothing to undo because
of what the packet committed to his care might contain.
CHAPTER LXV.
THE PACKET.
The day so often in Wingfold’s thought, arrived
at last—the anniversary of the death of
sir Wilton. He rose early, his mind anxious, and
his heart troubled that his mind should be anxious,
and set out for London by the first train. Arrived;
he sought at once the office of sir Wilton’s
lawyer, and when at last Mr. Bell appeared, begged
him to witness the opening of the packet. Mr.
Bell broke the seal himself, read the baronet’s
statement of the request he had made to Wingfold, and
then opened the enclosed packet.
Copyrights
There & Back from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
