



Produced by Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders







THERE & BACK

By George Macdonald



CONTENTS

CHAP.

       I. FATHER, CHILD, AND NURSE
      II. STEPMOTHER AND NURSE
     III. THE FLIGHT
      IV. THE BOOKBINDER AND HIS PUPIL
       V. THE MANSONS
      VI. SIMON ARMOUR
     VII. COMPARISONS
    VIII. A LOST SHOE
      IX. A HOLIDAY
       X. THE LIBRARY
      XI. ALICE
     XII. MORTGRANGE
    XIII. THE BEECH-TREE
     XIV. AGAIN THE LIBRARY
      XV. BARBARA WYLDER
     XVI. BARBARA AND RICHARD
    XVII. BARBARA AND OTHERS
   XVIII. MRS. WYLDER
     XIX. MRS. WYLDER AND BARBARA
      XX. BARBARA AND HER CRITICS
     XXI. THE PARSON'S PARABLE
    XXII. THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER
   XXIII. A HUMAN GADFLY
    XXIV. RICHARD AND WINGFOLD
     XXV. WINGFOLD AND HIS WIFE
    XXVI. RICHARD AND ALICE
   XXVII. A SISTER
  XXVIII. BARBARA AND LADY ANN
    XXIX. ALICE AND BARBARA
     XXX. BARBARA THINKS
    XXXI. WINGFOLD AND BARBARA
   XXXII. THE SHOEING OF MISS BROWN
  XXXIII. RICHARD AND VIXEN
   XXXIV. BARBARA'S DUTY
    XXXV. THE PARSON'S COUNSEL
   XXXVI. LADY ANN MEDITATES
  XXXVII. LADY ANN AND RICHARD
 XXXVIII. RICHARD AND ARTHUR
   XXXIX. MR., MRS., AND MISS WYLDER
      XL. IN LONDON
     XLI. NATURE AND SUPERNATURE
    XLII. YET A LOWER DEEP
   XLIII. TO BE REDEEMED, ONE MUST REDEEM
    XLIV. A DOOR OPENED IN HEAVEN
     XLV. THE CARRIAGE
    XLVI. RICHARD'S DILEMMA
   XLVII. THE DOORS OF HARMONY AND DEATH
  XLVIII. DEATH THE DELIVERER
    XLIX. THE CAVE IN THE FIRE
       L. DUCK-FISTS
      LI. BARONET AND BLACKSMITH
     LII. UNCLE-FATHER AND AUNT-MOTHER
    LIII. MORNING
     LIV. BARBARA AT HOME
      LV. MISS BROWN
     LVI. WINGFOLD AND BARBARA
    LVII. THE BARONET'S WILL
   LVIII. THE HEIR
     LIX. WINGFOLD AND ARTHUR MANSON
      LX. RICHARD AND HIS FAMILY
     LXI. HEART TO HEART
    LXII. THE QUARREL
   LXIII. BARONET AND BLACKSMITH
    LXIV. THE BARONET'S FUNERAL
     LXV. THE PACKET
    LXVI. BARBARA'S DREAM




_NOTE._

_Some of the readers of this tale will be glad to know that the passage
with which it ends is a real dream; and that, with but three or four
changes almost too slight to require acknowledging, I have given it word
for word as the friend to whom it came set it down for me._




CHAPTER I. _FATHER, CHILD, AND NURSE._

It would be but stirring a muddy pool to inquire--not what motives
induced, but what forces compelled sir Wilton Lestrange to marry a woman
nobody knew. It is enough to say that these forces were mainly ignoble,
as manifested by their intermittent character and final cessation.
The _mesalliance_ occasioned not a little surprise, and quite as much
annoyance, among the county families,--failing, however, to remind any
that certain of their own grandmothers had been no better known to the
small world than lady Lestrange. It caused yet more surprise, though
less annoyance, in the clubs to which sir Wilton had hitherto been
indebted for help to forget his duties: they set him down as a greater
idiot than his friends had hitherto imagined him. For had he not been
dragged to the altar by a woman whose manners and breeding were hardly
on the level of a villa in St. John's Wood? Did any one know whence she
sprang, or even the name which sir Wilton had displaced with his own?
But sir Wilton himself was not proud of his lady; and if the thing had
been any business of theirs, it would have made no difference to him; he
would none the less have let them pine in their ignorance. Did not his
mother, a lady less dignified than eccentric, out of pure curiosity beg
enlightenment concerning her origin, and receive for answer from the
high-minded baronet, "Madam, the woman is my wife!"--after which the
prudent dowager asked no more questions, but treated her daughter-in-law
with neither better nor worse than civility. Sir Wilton, in fact, soon
came to owe his wife a grudge that he had married her, and none the
less that at the time he felt himself of a generosity more than human in
bestowing upon her his name. Creation itself, had he ever thought of it,
would have seemed to him a small thing beside such a gift!

That Robina Armour, after experience of his first advances, should have
at last consented to marry sir Wilton Lestrange, was in no sense in her
favour, although after a fashion she was in love with him--in love, that
is, with the gentleman of her own imagining whom she saw in the baronet;
while the baronet, on his part, was what he called in love with what he
called _the woman_. As he was overcome by her beauty, so was she by
his rank--an idol at whose clay feet is cast many a spiritual
birthright--and as mean a deity as any of man's device. But the
blacksmith's daughter was in many respects, notwithstanding, a woman
of good sense, with much real refinement, and a genuine regard for
rectitude. Although sir Wilton had never loved her with what was best
in him, it was not in spite of what was best in him that he fell in love
with her. Had his better nature been awake, it would have justified the
bond, and been strengthened by it.

Lady Lestrange's father was a good blacksmith, occasionally drunk in
his youth, but persistently sober now in his middle age; a long-headed
fellow, with reach and quality in the prudence which had long ceased to
appear to him the highest of virtues. At one period he had accounted it
the prime duty of existence to take care of oneself; and so much of this
belief had he communicated to his younger daughter, that she deported
herself so that sir Wilton married her--with the result that, when Death
knocked at her door, she welcomed him to her heart. The first cry of her
child, it is true, made her recall the welcome, but she had to go with
him, notwithstanding, when the child was but an hour old.

Not one of her husband's family was in the house when she died. Sir
Wilton himself was in town, and had been for the last six months,
preferring London and his club to Mortgrange and his wife. When a
telegram informed him that she was in danger, he did go home, but when
he arrived, she had been an hour gone, and he congratulated himself that
he had taken the second train.

There had been betwixt them no approach to union. When what sir Wilton
called love had evaporated, he returned to his mire, with a resentful
feeling that the handsome woman--his superior in everything that belongs
to humanity--had bewitched him to his undoing. The truth was, she had
ceased to charm him. The fault was not in her; it lay in the dulled eye
of the swiftly deteriorating man, which grew less and less capable
of seeing things as they were, and transmitted falser and falser
impressions of them. The light that was in him was darkness. The woman
that might have made a man of him, had there been the stuff, passed from
him an unprized gift, a thing to which he made Hades welcome.

It