Thomas Wingfold closed his book, replaced it in his pocket, got down from the stile, turned his face toward home, crossed field after field, and arrived just in time to meet his wife as she came down the stair to breakfast.
“Have you had a nice walk, Thomas?” she asked.
“Indeed I have!” he answered. “Almost from the first I was right out in the open.”—His wife knew what he meant.—“Before the sun came up”, he went on, “I had to go in, and come out at another door; but I was soon very glad of it. I had met a fellow who, I think, will pluck his feet out of the mud before long.”
“Have you asked him to the rectory?”
“No.”
“Shall I write and ask him?”
“No, my wife. For one thing, you can't: I don't know his name, and I don't know what he is, or where he lives. But we shall meet again soon.”
“Then you have made an appointment with him!”
“No, I haven't. But there's an undertow bringing us on to each other. It would spoil all if he thought I threw a net for him. I do mean to catch him if I can, but I will not move till the tide brings him into my arms. At least, that is how the thing looks to me at present. I believe enough not to make haste. I don't want to throw salt on any bird's tail, but I do want the birds to come hopping about me, that I may tell them what I know!”
As near as he could, Wingfold recounted the conversation he had had with Richard.
“He was a fine-looking fellow,” he said, “—not exactly a gentleman, but not far off it; little would make him one. He looked a man that could do things, but I did not satisfy myself as to what might be his trade. He showed no sign of it, or made any allusion to it. But he was more at home in the workshop of his own mind than is at all usual with fellows of his age.”
“It must,” said Helen, “be old Simon Armour's grandson! I have heard of him from several quarters; and your description would just fit him. I know somebody that could tell you about him, but I wish I know anybody that could tell us about her—I mean Miss Wylder.”
“I like the look of that girl!” said the parson warmly, “What makes you think she could tell us about my new acquaintance?”
“Only an impertinent speech of that little simian, Vixen Lestrange. I forget what she said, but it left the impression of an acquaintance between Bab, as she called her, and some working fellow the child could not bear.”
“The enmity of that child is praise. I wonder how the Master would have treated her! He could not have taken her between his knees, and said whosoever received her received him! A child-mask with a monkey inside it will only serve a sentimental mother to talk platitudes about!”
“Don't be too hard on the monkeys, Tom!” said his wife. “You don't know what they may turn out to be, after all!”
“Surely it is not too hard on the monkeys to call them monkeys!”
“No; but when the monkey has already begun to be a child!”
“There is the whole point! Has the monkey always begun to be a child when he gets the shape of a child?—Miss Wylder is not quite so seldom in church now, I think!”
“I saw her there last Sunday. But I'm afraid she wasn't thinking much about what you were saying—she sat with such a stony look in her eyes! She did seem to come awake for one moment, though!”
“Tell me.”
“I could hardly take my eyes off her, my heart was so drawn to her. There was a mingling of love and daring, almost defiance, in her look, that seemed to say, 'If you are worth it—if you are worth it—then through fire and water!' All at once a flash lighted up her lovely child-face—and what do you think you were at the moment saying?—that the flower of a plant was deeper than the root of it: that was what roused her!”
“And I, when I found what I had said, thought within myself what a fool I was to let out things my congregation could not possibly understand!—But to reach one is, in the end, to reach all!”
“I must in honesty tell you, however,” pursued Mrs. Wingfold, “that the next minute she looked as far off as before; nor did she shine up once again that I saw.”
“I will be glad, though,” said Wingfold, “because of what you tell me! It shows there is a window in her house that looks in my direction: some signal may one day catch her eye! That she has a character of her own, a real one, I strongly suspect. Her mother more than interests me. She certainly has a fine nature. How much better is a fury than a fish! You cannot be downright angry save in virtue of the love possible to you. The proper person, who always does and says the correct thing—well, I think that person is almost sure to be a liar. At the same time, the contradictions in the human individual are bewildering, even appalling!—Now I must go to my study, and think out a thing that's bothering me!—By the way,”—he always said that when he was going to make her a certain kind of present; she knew what was coming—“here's something for you—if you can read it! I had just scribbled it this morning when the young man came up. I made it last night. I was hours awake after we went to bed!”
This is what he gave her:—
A SONG IN THE NIGHT.A brown bird sang on a blossomy tree,Sang in the moonshine, merrily,Three little songs, one, two, and three,A song for his wife, for himself, and me.He sang for his wife, sang low, sang high,Filling the moonlight that filled the sky,“Thee, thee, I love thee, heart alive!Thee, thee, thee, and thy round eggs five!”He sang to himself, “What shall I doWith this life that thrills me through and through!Glad is so glad that it turns to ache!Out with it, song, or my heart will break!”He sang to me, “Man, do not fearThough the moon goes down, and the dark is near;Listen my song, and rest thine eyes;Let the moon go down that the sun may rise!”I folded me up in the heart of his tune,And fell asleep in the sinking moon;I woke with the day's first golden gleam,And lo, I had dreamed a precious dream!
One evening Richard went to see his grandfather, and asked if he would allow him to give Miss Wylder a lesson in horseshoeing: she wanted, he said, to be able to shoe Miss Brown—or indeed any horse. Simon laughed heartily at the proposal: it was too great an absurdity to admit of serious objection!
“Ah, you don't know Miss Wylder, grandfather!” said Richard.
“Of course not! Never an old man knew anything about a girl! It's only the young fellows can fathom a woman! Having girls of his own blinds a man to the nature of them! There's going to be a law passed against growing old! It's an unfortunate habit the world's got into somehow, and the young fellows are going to put a stop to it for fear of losing their wisdom!”
As the blacksmith spoke, he went on rasping and filing at a house-door key, fast in a vice on his bench; and his words seemed to Richard to fall from his mouth like the raspings from his rasp.
“Well, grandfather,” said Richard, “if Miss Wylder don't astonish you, she'll astonish me!”
“Have you ever seen her drive a nail, boy?”
“Not once; but I am just as sure she will do it—and better than any beginner you've seen yet!”
“Well, well, lad! we'll see! we'll see! She's welcome anyhow to come and have her try! What day shall it be?”
“That I can't tell yet.”
“It makes me grin to think o' them doll's hands with a great hoof in them!”
“Theyarelittle hands—she's little herself—but they ain't doll's hands, grandfather. You should have seen her box Miss Vixen's ears for making a face at me! Her ears didn't take them for doll's hands, I'll be bound! The room rang again!”
“Bring her when you like, lad,” said Simon.
It was moonlight, and when Richard arrived at the lodgeless gate, he saw inside it, a few yards away, seated on a stone, the form of a woman. He thought the first moment, as was natural, of Barbara, but the next, he knew that this was something strange. She sat in helpless, hopeless attitude, with her head in her hands. A strange dismay came upon him at the sight of her; his heart fluttered in a cage of fear. He did not believe in ghosts. If he saw one, it would but show that sometimes when a person died there was a shadow left that was like him! There might be millions of ghosts, and no God the more! What are we all but spectres of the unknown? What was death but a vanishing of the unknown? What are the dead but vanishments! Yet he shuddered at the thought that he had actually come upon one of the dead that are still alive, of whom, once or twice in a long century, one is met wandering vaguely about the world, unable to find what used to make it home. He peered through the iron bars as into a charnel-house: one such wanderer was enough to make the whole vault of night a gaping tomb.
Putting his key in the lock made a sharp little noise. The figure started up, her face gleaming white in the moon, but dropped again on her stone, unable to stand. Richard could not take his eyes off her. While closing the gate he dared not turn his back to her. She sat motionless as before, her head in her hands, her elbows on her knees. He stood for a moment staring and trembling, then, with an effort of the will that approached agony, went toward her. As he drew nearer, he began to feel as if he had once known her. He must have seen her in London somewhere, he thought. But why was her shadow sitting there, the lonely hostless guest of the night's caravansary?
He went nearer. The form remained motionless. Something reminded him of Alice Manson.
He laid his hand on the figure. It was a woman to the touch as well as to the eye. But not yet did she move an inch. He would have raised her face. Then she resisted. All at once he was sure she was Alice.
“Alice!” he cried. “Good God!—sitting in the cold night!”
She made him no answer, sat stone-still.
“What shall I do for you?” he said.
“Nothing,” she answered, in a voice that might well have been that of a spectre. “Leave me,” she added, as if with the last entreaty of despair.
“You are in trouble, Alice!” he persisted. “Why are you so far from home? Where's Arthur?”
“What right haveyouto question me?” she returned, almost fiercely.
“None but that I am your brother's friend.”
“Friend!” she echoed, in a faint far-away voice.
“You forget, Alice, that I did all I could to be your friend, and you would not let me!”
She neither spoke nor moved. Her stillness seemed to say, “Neither will I now.”
“Where are you going?” he asked, after a hopeless pause.
“Nowhere.”
“Why did you leave London?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“I think you will tell me!”
“I will not.”
“You know I would do anything for you!”
“I daresay!”
“You know I would!”
“I don't.”
“Try me.”
“I will not.”
Her voice grew more and more faint and forced. Her words and it were very unlike.
“Don't go on like that, Alice. You're not being reasonable,” pleaded Richard.
“Oh, do leave me alone!”
“I won't leave you.”
“As you please! It's nothing to me.”
“Alice, why do you speak to me like that? Tell me what's wrong.”
“Everything is wrong. Everybody is wrong. The whole world is wrong.”
Her voice was a little stronger. She raised herself, and looked him in the face.
“I hope not.”
“I hope it is!”
“Why should you?”
“To think things were right would be too terrible! I say everything's wrong.”
“What's to be done, then?” sighed Richard.
“I must get out of it all.”
“But how?”
“There is only one way.”
“What is that?”
“Everybody knows.”
“Alice,” cried Richard, nearly in despair like herself, “are you out of your mind?”
“Pretty nearly.—Why shouldn't I be? There are plenty of us!”
“Alice, if you won't tell me what is the matter with you, if you won't let me help you, I will sit down by you till the morning.”
“What if I drop?”
“Then I will carry you away. The sooner you drop the better.” Her resolution seemed to break.
“I 'ain't eaten a mouthful to-day,” she said.
“My poor girl! Promise me to wait till I come back. Here, put on my coat.”
She was past resisting more, and allowed him to button his coat about her.
But he was in great perplexity: where was he to get anything for her? And how was she to live till he brought it! It was terrible to think of! Alice with nothing to eat, and no refuge but a stone in the moonlight! This was what her religion had done for Alice!
“Miss Wylder's God!” he said to himself with contempt.
“He's well enough for the wind and the stars and the moonlight! but for human beings—for Alice—for creatures dying of hunger, what a mockery! If he were there, it would be a sickness to talk of him! Beauty is beauty, but for anything behind it—pooh!”
He stood a moment hesitating. Alice swayed on her seat, and would have fallen. He caught her—and in the act remembered a little cottage, a hut rather, down a lane a short way off. He took her in his arms and started for it.
She was dreadfully thin, but a strong man cannot walk very fast carrying a woman, however light she be, and she had half come to herself before he reached the cottage.
“Richard, dear Richard!” she murmured at his ear, “where are you carrying me? Are you going to kill me, or are you taking me home with you? Do set me down. Where's Arthur? I will let you be good to me! I will! I can't hold out for ever!”
She seemed to be dreaming—apparently about their meeting in Regent-street; or perhaps she was delirious from want of food. He walked on without attempting to answer her. Some great wrong had been done her, and his heart sank within him; for he believed in no judgment, no final setting right of wrongs. He knew of nothing better than that the wronged and the wronger would cease together. Certainly, if his creed represented fact, the best thing in existence is that it has no essential life in it, that it cannot continue, that it must cease: the good of living is that we must die. The hope of death is the inspiration of Buddhism! His heart ached with pity for the girl. His help, his tenderness expanded, and folded her in the wings of a shelter that was not empty because his creed was false.
“She belongs to me!” he said to himself. “The world has thrown her off: 'be it lawful I take up what's cast away!' Here is the one treasure, a human being! the best thing in the world! I will cherish it. Poor girl! she shall at least know one man a refuge!”
The cottage was a wretched place, but a labourer and his family lived in it. He knocked many times. A sleepy voice answered at last, and presently a sleepy-eyed man half opened the door.
“What's the deuce of a row?” he grunted.
“Here's a young woman half dead with hunger and cold!” said Richard. “You must take her in or she'll die!”
“Can't you take her somewhere else?”
“There's nowhere else near enough.—Come, come, let us in! You wouldn't have her die on your doorstep!”
“I don'ow as I see the sense o' bringin' her here!” answered the man sleepily. “We ain't out o' the hunger-wood ourselves yet!—Wife! here's a chap as says he's picked up a young 'oman a dyin' o' 'unger!—'tain't likely, be it, i' this land o' liberty?”
“Likely enough, Giles, where the liberty's mainly to starve!” replied a feminine voice. “Let un bring the poor thing in. There ain't nowhere to put her, an' there ain't nothin' to give her, but she can't lie out in the wide world!”
“'Ain't you got a drop o' milk?” asked Richard.
“Milk!” echoed the woman; “it's weeks an' weeks the childer 'ain't tasted of it! The wonder to me is that the cows let a poor man milk 'em!”
Richard set Alice on her feet, but she could not stand alone; had he taken his arm from round her, she would have fallen in a heap. But the woman while she spoke had been getting a light, and now came to the door with a candle-end. Her husband kept prudently in her shadow.
“Poor thing! poor thing! she be far gone!” she said, when she saw her. “Bring her in, sir. There's a chair she can sit upon. I'll get her a drop o' tea—that'll be better'n milk! There's next to no work, and the squire he be mad wi' Giles acause o' some rabbit or other they says he snared—which they did say it was a hare—I don'ow: take the skin off, an' who's to tell t'one from t'other! I do know I was right glad on't for the childer! An' if the parson tell me my man 'ill be damned for hare or rabbit, an' the childer starvin', I'll give him a bit o' my mind.—'No, sir!' says I; 'God ain't none o' your sort!' says I. 'An' p'r'aps the day may be at hand when the rich an' the poor 'ill have a turn o' a change together! Leastways there's somethin' like it somewheres i' the Bible,' says I. 'An' if it be i' the Bible,' says I, 'it's likely to be true, for the Bible do take the part o' the rich—mostly!'”
She was a woman who liked to hear herself talk, and so spoke as one listening to herself. Like most people, whether they talk or not, she got her ideas second-hand; but Richard was nowise inclined to differ with what she said about the Bible, for he knew little more and no better about it than she. Had parson Wingfold, who did know the Bible as few parsons know it, heard her, he would have told her that, by search express and minute, he had satisfied himself that there was not a word in the Bible against the poor, although a multitude of words against the rich. The sins of the poor are not once mentioned in the Bible, the sins of the rich very often. The rich may think this hard, but I state the fact, and do not much care what they think. When they come to judge themselves and others fairly, they will understand that God is no respecter of persons, not favouring even the poor in his cause.
Richard set Alice on the one chair, by the poor little fire the woman was coaxing to heat the water she had put on it in a saucepan. Alice stared at the fire, but hardly seemed to see it. The woman tried to comfort her. Richard looked round the place: the man was in the bed that filled one corner; a mattress in another was crowded with children; there was no spot where she could lie down.
“I shall be back as soon's ever I can,” he said, and left the cottage.
He hurried back over the bare, moon-white road. He had seen Miss Wylder come that morning, and hoped to reach the house, which was not very far off, before she should have gone to bed. Of her alone in that house did he feel he could ask the help he needed. If she had gone home, he would try the gardener's wife! But he wanted a woman with wit as well as will. He would help himself from the larder if he could not do better—but there would be no brandy there!
Many were the thoughts that, as now he walked, now ran, passed swiftly through his mind. It was strange, he said to himself, that this girl, of whom he had seen so little, yet in whom he felt so great an interest, should reappear in such dire necessity! When last he saw her, she hurt herself in frantic escape from him: now she could not escape!
“And this is the world,” he went on, “that the priests would have you believe ruled by the providence of an all powerful and all good being!Myheart is sore for the girl—a good girl, if ever there was one, so that I would give—yes, I think I would give my life for her! I certainly would, rather than see her in misery! Of course I would! Any man would, worth calling a man! When it came to the point, I should not think twice about it! And there ishe, sitting up there in his glory, and looking down unmoved upon her wretchedness! I willnotbelieve in any such God!”
Of course he was more than right in refusing to believe in such a God! Were such a being possible, he would not be God. If there were such a being, and all powerful, he would betheonenotto be worshipped. But was Richard, therefore, to believe in no God altogether different? May a God only be such as is not to be believed in? Is it not rather that, to be God, the being must be so good that a man is hardly to be found able—must I say also, or willing—to believe in him? Perhaps, if he had been as anxious to do his duty all over, out and out, as he was where his feelings pointed to it, Richard might have had a “What if” or two to propose to himself. Might he not for instance have said, “What if a certain being should even now be putting in my way the honour and gladness of helping this woman—making me his messenger to her?” What if his soul was too impatient to listen for the next tick of the clock of eternity, and was left therefore to declare there was no such clock going! Ought he not even now to have been capable of thinking that there might be a being with a design for his creatures yet better thanmerelyto make them happy? What if, that gained, the other must follow! Here was a man judging the eternal, who did not even know his own name!
As he drew near the house, the question arose in his mind: if Miss Wylder was gone to her room, what was he to do to find her? He did not know where her room was! He knew that, when she went up the stair, at the top of it she turned to the right—and he knew no more.
The side-gate at the lodge was yet open; so was the great door of the house. He entered softly, and going along a wide passage, arrived at the foot of the great staircase, which ascended with the wide sweep of half an oval, just in time to see at the top the reflection of a candle disappearing to the right. There were many chances against its being Barbara's, but with an almost despairing recklessness he darted up, and turning, saw again the reflection of the candle from the wall of a passage that crossed the corridor. He followed as swiftly and lightly as he could, and at the corner all but overturned an elderly maid, whose fright gave place to wrath when she saw who had endangered her.
“I want to see Miss Wylder!” said Richard hurriedly.
“You have no call to be in this part of the house,” returned the woman.
“I can't stop to explain,” answered Richard. “Please tell me which is her room.”
“Indeed I will not.”
“When she knows my business, she will be glad I came to her.”
“You may find it for yourself.”
“Will you take a message for me then?”
“I am not Miss Wylder's maid!” she replied. “Neither is it my place to wait on my fellow-servants.”
She turned away, tossing her head, and rounded the corner into the corridor.
Richard looked down the passage. A light was burning at the other end of it, and he saw there were not many doors in it. With a sudden resolve to go straight ahead, he called out clear and plain—
“Miss Wylder!” and again, “Miss Wylder!”
A door opened and, to his delight, out peeped Barbara's dainty little head. She saw Richard, gave one glance in the opposite direction, and made him a sign to come to her. He did so. She was in her dressing-gown: it was not her candle he had followed, but its light had led him to her!
“What is it!” she said hurriedly. “Don't speak loud: lady Ann might hear you!”
“There's a girl all but dying—” began Richard.
“Go to the library,” she said. “I will come to you there. I shan't be a minute!”
She went in, and her door closed with scarce a sound. Then first a kind of scare fell upon Richard: one of those doors might open, and the pale, cold face of the formidable lady look out Gorgon-like! If it was her candle he had followed, she could hardly have put it down when he called Miss Wylder! He ran gliding through passage and corridor, and down the stair, noiseless and swift as a bat. Arrived in the library, he lighted a candle, and, lest any one should enter, pretended to be looking out books. Within five minutes Barbara was at his side.
“Now!” she said, and stood silent, waiting.
There was a solemn look on her face, and none of the smile with which she usually greeted him. Their last interview had made her miserable for a while, and more solemn for ever. For hours the world was black about her, and she felt as if Richard had struck her. To say there was no God behind the loveliness of things, was to say there was no loveliness—nothing but a pretence of loveliness! The world was a painted thing! a toy for a doll! a phantasm!
He told her where and in what state he had found the girl, and to what a poor place he had been compelled to carry her, saying he feared she would die before he could get anything for her, except Miss Wylder would help him.
“Brandy!” she said, thinking. “Lady Ann has some in her room. The rest I can manage!—Wait here; I will be with you in three minutes.”
She went, and Richard waited—without anxiety, for whatever Barbara undertook seemed to those who knew her as good as done.
She reappeared in her red cloak, with a basket beneath it. Richard, wondering, would have taken the basket from her.
“Wait till we are out of the house,” she said. “Open that bay window, and mind you don't make a noise. They mustn't find it undone: we have to get in that way again.”
Richard obeyed scrupulously. It was a French window, and issue was easy.
“What if they close the shutters?” he ventured to say.
“They don't always. We must take our chance,” she replied.
He thought she must mean to go as far as the lodge only.
“You won't forget, miss, to fasten the window again?” he whispered, as he closed it softly behind them.
“We must always risk something!” she answered. “Come along!”
“Please give me the basket,” said Richard.
She gave it him; and the next moment he found her leading to the way through the park toward the lodgeless gate.
They had walked a good many minutes, and Barbara had not said a word.
“How good of you, miss, to come!” ventured Richard.
“To come!” she returned. “What else did you expect? Did you not want me to come?”
“I never thought of your coming! I only thought you would get the right things for me—if you could!”
“You don't think I would leave the poor girl to the mercy of a man who would tell her there was nobody anywhere to help her out of her troubles!”
“I don't think I should have told her that; I might have told her there was nobody to bring worse trouble upon her!”
“What comfort would that be, when the trouble was come—and as strong as she could bear!”
Richard was silent a moment, then in pure self-defence answered—
“A man must neither take nor give the comfort of a lie!”
“Tell me honestly then,” said Barbara, “—for I do believe you are an honest man—tell me, are yousurethere is no God? Have you gone all through the universe looking for him, and failed to find him? Is there no possible chance that there may be a God!”
“I do not believe there is.”
“But are you sure there is not? Do you know it, so that you have a right to say it?”
Richard hesitated.
“I cannot say,” he answered, “that I know it as I know a proposition in Euclid, or as I know that I must not do what is wrong.”
“Then what right have you to go and make people miserable by saying there is no God—as if you, being an honest man, knew it, and would not say it if you did not know it? You take away the only comfort left the unhappy! Of course you have a right to say you don't believe it—but only that! And I would think twice before I said even that, where all the certainty was that it would make people miserable!”
“I don't know anybody it would make miserable,” said Richard.
“It would make me dead miserable,” returned Barbara.
“I know many it would redeem from misery,” rejoined Richard. “To believe in a cruel being ready to pounce upon them is enough to make the strongest miserable.”
“The cruel being that made the world, you mean?”
“Yes—if the world was made.”
“If one believes in any God, it must be the same God that made this lovely night—and the gladness it would give me, if you did not take it from me!”
Richard was silent for a moment.
“How can I take it from you?” he said, “if you think what I say is not true?”
“You make me fear lest it should be true; and then farewell to all joy in life—not only for want of some one to love right heartily, but because there is no refuge from the evils that are all about us. I have no quarrel with you if you say these evils are brought upon us by an evil being, who lives to make men miserable; there you leave room to believe also in one fighting against him, to whom we can go for help! The God our parson believes in he calls 'God, our saviour.' To take away the notion of any kind of God, is to make life too dreary to live!”
“Yours is the old doctrine of the Magians,” remarked Richard.
“Well?”
“I could accept it easily beside what people believe now.”
“What do they believe?”
“They believe in the God of the Bible, who makes pets of a few of his creatures, and sends all the rest into eternal torment. Would you comfort people with the good news of a God like that?”
“Such a God is not to be believed in! Deny him all you can. But because there cannot be an evil God, what right have you to say there cannot be a good one? That is to reason backward! The very notion of a night like this having no meaning in it—no God in it who intends it to look just so, is enough to makememiserable. But I willnotbelieve it! I shall hate you if you make me believe it!”
“The Bible says there is an evil being behind it!”
“I don't know much about the Bible, but I don't believe it says that.”
“Of course itcallshim good, but it says he does certain things which we know to be bad.”
“You make too much of the Bible, if it says such things. Throw it out of the window and have done with it. But how dare you tell me there is nobody greater than me to account for me! You make of me a creature that was not worth being made; a mere ooze from nothing, like the scum on the pond, there because it cannot help it. If I have no God to be my justification, my being becomes loathsome to me. I don't know how I came to be, where I came from, or where I am going to; and you say therecanbe nobody that knows; you tell me there is no help; that I must die in the dark I came out of; that there is no love about me knowing what it loves. Even if I found myself alive and awake and happy after I was dead, what comfort would there be if there was no God? How should I ever grow better?—how get rid of the wrong things in myself?—If life has no better thing for this poor woman, be kind and let her die and have done with it. Why keep her in such a hopeless existence as you believe in? You can have but little regard for her surely! I beg of you don't saythat thingto her, for you don'tknowit.”
Richard was again silent for a while; then he said—
“I had no intention of saying anything of the sort, but I promise because you wish it.”
“Thank you! thank you!”
“I promise too,” added Richard, “that I will not say anything more of that kind until I have thought a good deal more about it.”
“Thank you again heartily!” said Barbara. “I am sure of one thing—that you cannot have ground for not hoping! Is not hope all we have got? He is the very butcher of humanity who kills its hope! It is hope we live by!”
“But if it be a false hope?”
“A false hope cannot do so much harm as a false fear!”
“The false fear is just what I oppose. The Bible tells people—”
“There you are back to the book you don't believe in! And because you don't believe in the book that makes people afraid, you insist there can be no such thing as the gladness my heart cries out for! If you want to make people happy, why don't you preach a good God instead of no God?”
“I will think about what you say,” replied Richard.
“Mind,” said Barbara, “I don't pretend to know anything! I only say I have a right to hope. And for the Bible, I must have a better look at it! A man who, being a good man, wants to comfort us poor women, whom men knock about so, by taking from us the idea of a living God that cares for us, cannot be so wise but that he may be wrong about a book! Have you read it all through now, Mr. Tuke—so that you are sure it says what you say it says?”
“I have not,” answered Richard; “but everybody knows what it says!”
“Well, I don't! Nobody has taken the trouble to tell me, and I haven't read it.—But I'll just give you a little bit of my life to look at. I was with my father and mother for a while in Sydney, and there a terrible lie was told about me, and everybody believed it, and nobody would speak to me. Somehow people are always ready to believe lies—even people who would not tell lies! We had to leave Sydney in consequence, and to this day everybody in Sydney believes me a wicked, ugly girl!—Now I know I am not! See—I can hold my face to the stars! It was trying to help a poor creature that nobody would do anything for, that got the lie said of me. I thought my first business was to take care of my neighbour, and I did it, and that's what came of it!”
“And you believe in a God that would let that come to you for doing what was good?” said Richard, with an indignation that exploded in all directions.
“Stop! stop! the thing's not over yet! The world is not done with yet! What if there be a God who loves me, and cares as little what people say about me, because he knows the truth, as I care about it becauseIknow the truth!—But that is not what I wanted to say; this is it: if such lies were told, and believed, about an innocent girl trying to do her duty, why may not people have told lies about God, and other people believed them? The same thing may hold with the book. Perhaps it does not speak such lies about God, but stupid or lying people have said that it speaks them, and other people have believed those, and said it again. I hope with all my heart you are saying what is false when you say there is no God; but that is not nearly so bad as saying there is a God who is not good. I can't think anybody believing in a God like that, would have been able to write a book about him that so many good people care to read.”
Richard was thoroughly silenced now. I do not mean that he was at all convinced, but how could he find much to say with that appeal of Barbara to her own sore experience echoing in his heart! And they were just at the door of the cottage. He knocked, and receiving no answer, opened the door, and they went in.
There was light enough from the glow of a mere remnant of fire in a corner, to see, on a stool by its side, the good woman of the house fast asleep, with her head against the wall. Her husband was snoring in bed. The children lay still as death on their mattress upon the floor. Alice sat on the one chair, her head fallen back, and her face as white as human face could be; but when they listened, they could hear her breathing. Beside the pale, worn, vanishing girl, Barbara looked the incarnation of concentrated life and energy. Her cheeks were flushed with the rapid walk, and her eyes were still flashing with the thoughts that had been rising in her, and the words that had been going from her. For a moment she stood radiant with the tender glow of an infinite pity, as she looked down on the death-like girl; then, with a sigh in which trembled the very luxury of service, she put her arm under the poor back-fallen head, and lifted it gently up. With the motion, Alice's eyes opened, like those of certain wonderful dolls, but they did not seem to have so much life in them.
“Quick!” said Barbara; “give me a little brandy in the cup.”
Richard made haste, and Barbara put the cup to Alice's lips.
“Dear, take a little brandy; it will revive you,” she said.
Alice came to her windows and looked, and saw the face of an angel bending over her. She obeyed the heavenly vision, and drank what it offered. It made her cough, and their hostess started to her feet as if dreading censure; but a smile and a greeting from Barbara reassured her. She thanked her for her hospitality as if Alice had been her sister, and slipping money into her hand, coaxingly begged her to make up the fire a little, that she might warm some soup.
Almost at once upon her tasting the soup, a little colour began to come in Alice's cheek. Barbara was feeding her, and a feeble smile flickered over the thin face every time it looked up in Barbara's. Richard stood gazing, and saw that hope in God could not much have lessened one woman's tenderness. He had scarcely seen tenderness in his mother; and certainly he had seen little hope. She was thoroughly kind to him, and he knew she would have died for her husband; but he had seen no sweetness in their intercourse, neither could remember any sweetness to himself. The hot spring of his aunt's love to him was no geyser, and he never knew in this world how hot it was. Hence was it to Richard more than a gracious sight, it was a revelation to him, as he watched the electric play of the love that passed from the strong, tender, child-like girl to the delicate, weary, starved creature to whom she was ministering.
At length Barbara thought it better she should have no more food for the present, when naturally the question arose, what was to be done next. The saviours went out into the night to have a free talk, and a little fresh air—sorely wanted in the cottage.
Richard then told Barbara that, if she did not disapprove, he would take Alice to his grandfather: he was certain he would receive her cordially, and both he and Jessie would do what they could for her. But he did not know of any vehicle he could get to carry her, except his grandfather's pony-cart, and that was four miles away!
“All right!” said Barbara. “I will stay with her, in and out, till you come.”
“But how will you get home after?”
“As I came, of course. Don't trouble yourself about me; I can look after myself.”
“But if they should have fastened the library-window?”
“Then I will take refuge with mother Night. There will be room enough in the park. Perhaps I may go to roost in that beech-tree. Don't you think about me. I shall come to no harm. Go at once and fetch the pony-cart.”
Richard set off running, and came to his grandfather's while it was yet unreviving night; but he had little difficulty in rousing the old man. He told him all he knew about Alice, as well as the plight in which he had found her. Simon looked grave when he heard how his daughter had come between Richard and his friends. He hurried on his clothes, put the pony to, and got into the cart: he would himself fetch the girl! In another moment they were spinning along the gray road.
When they reached the hut, there was Barbara standing sentry near the door. She went and talked to Simon. Richard got down and went in. He found Alice wide awake, staring into the fire, with a look that brought a great rush of pity into his heart afresh. Remembering how the girl had shrunk from him before, he feared himself unfit to help, and knew himself unable to comfort her. For the first time he vaguely felt that there might be troubles needing a hand which neither man nor woman could hold out. Their kind hostess had crept into bed beside her husband, and was snoring as loud as he. Without a word he wrapped Alice in the blanket he had brought, and taking her once more in his arms, carried her to the cart. Leaning down from his perch, the sturdy old man received her in his, placed her comfortably beside him, put his arm round her, and with a nod to Barbara, and never a word to his grandson, drove away. Richard knew his rugged goodness too well to mind how he treated him, and was confident in him for Alice, as one to do not less but more than he promised. He was thus free to walk home with Barbara, glad at heart to know Alice in harbour, but a little anxious until Miss Wylder should be safe shut in her chamber.