It would have been difficult for Arthur himself to say whether in his heart rage or contempt was the stronger, when he saw the lady he loved walking in a field, turning and returning, in close talk with the bookbinder-fellow. Never had she so walked and talked withhim! She preferred the bookbinder's society to his—and made it no secret that she did, for, although evidently desirous of having their interview uninterrupted, they walked in full view of the high road!
What did Barbara mean by it? He could not treat her as a child and lay the matter before Richard! If a lady showed favour to a man, the less worthy he was, the less could he be expected to see the unfitness of the thing. Besides, to acknowledge thus any human relation between Richard and either of them, would be degrading. It was scorn alone that kept Arthur from hating Richard. For Barbara, he attributed her disregard of propriety, and the very possibility of her being interested in such a person, to the modes of life in the half savage country where she had been born and reared—educated, he remarked to himself, he could not say. But what did she mean by it? The worst of his torment was that the thought, unreasonable as it was, would yet come—that Richard was a good-looking fellow, and admiration, which in any English girl would have been rendered impossible by his vulgarity, might have a share in her enjoyment of his shop-talk about books. The idea was simply disgusting!
What was he to do? What could any one do? The girl was absolutely uncontrolled: was it likely she would prove controllable? Would she mind him, when she cared no more for his stately mother than for the dairy-woman! How could such a bewitching creature so lack refinement! The more he thought, the more inexplicable and self-contradictory her conduct appeared. Such a jewelled-humming-bird to make friends with a grubbing rook! The smell of the leather, not to mention the paste and glue, would be enough for any properly sensitive girl! Universally fascinating, why did she not correspond all through? Brought out in London, she would be the belle of the season! If he did not secure her, some poor duke would pounce on her!
But again what was he to do? Must he bring scorn on himself by appearing jealous of a tradesman, or must he let the fellow go on casting his greasy shadow about the place? As to her being in love with him, that was preposterous! The notion was an insult! Yet half the attention she gave the bookbinder would be paradise tohim! Hemustput a stop to it! he must send the man away! It would be a pity for the library! It was beginning to look beautiful, and would soon have been the most distinguished in the county: lord Chough's was nothing to it! But there were other book-binders as good as he! And what did the library matter! What did anything matter in such a difficulty!
She might take offence! She would be sure to suspect why the fellow was sent packing! She would know she had the blame of ruining the library, and the bookbinder as well, and would never enter the house again! He must leave the thing alone—for the present! But he would be on his guard! Against what, he did not plainly tell himself.
While the son was thus desiring a good riddance of the man he had brought into the house, and to whom Barbara was so much indebted, the mother was pondering the same thing. Should the man remain in the house or leave it? was the question with her also;—and if leave it, on what pretext? She was growing more and more uncomfortable at the possibilities. The possession of the estate by one born of another woman, and she of low origin; the subjection in which they would all be placed to him as the head of the family—a man used to the low ways of a trade, a man dirty and greasy, hardly in his right place at work in the library, the grandson of a blacksmith with brawny arms and smutty face—the ideas might well be painful to her!
Then first the thought struck her, that it must be his grandfather's doing that he was in the house! and there he was, at their very door, eager to bear testimony to the bookbinder as his grandson and heir to Mortgrange! Alas, the thing must be a fact, a horrible fact! All was over!—But she would do battle for her rights! She would not allow that the child was found! The thing was a conspiracy to supplant the true heir! How ruinous were the low tastes of gentlemen! If sir Wilton had but kept to his own rank, and made a suitable match, nothing of all this misery would have befallen them! If her predecessor had been a lady, her son would have been a gentleman, and there would have been nothing to complain of! To lady Ann, her feeling had the force of a conviction, that the son of Robina Armour could not, in the nature of things divinely ordained, have the same rights as her son. Lady Ann's God was the head of the English aristocracy. There was nothing selfish that lady Ann was not capable of wishing; there was nothing selfish she might not by degrees become capable of doing. She could not at that moment commit murder; neither could lady Macbeth have done so when she was a girl. The absurd falsity of her notions as to her rights, came from lack of love to her neighbour, and consequent insensibility to his claims. At the same time she had not keen, she had only absorbing feelings of her rights; there was nothingkeenin lady Ann; neither sense nor desire, neither hope nor fear, neither joy nor sorrow, neither love nor hate. Beyond her own order, beyond indeed her own circle in that order, the universe hardly existed. An age-long process of degeneration had been going on in her race, and she was the result: she was well born and well bred for feeling nothing. There is something fearful in the thought that through the generations the body may go on perfecting, while the heart goes on degenerating; that, while the animal beauty is growing complete in the magic of proportion, the indescribable marvel that can even give charm to ugliness, is as steadily vanishing. Such a woman, like Branca d'Oria in the Inferno, is already damned, and only seems to live. Lady Ann was indeed born capable of less than most; but had she attempted to do the little she could, one would not have been where she was; she would have beep toiling up the hill of truth, with a success to be measured, like the widow's mite, by what she had not.
All her thoughts were now occupied with therightsof her son, and through him of the family. Sir Wilton had been for some time ailing, and when he went, they would be at the mercy of any other heir than Arthur, just as miserably whether he were the true heir or an impostor; the one was as bad as the other from her point of view! For the right, lady Ann cared nothing, except to have it or to avoid it. The law of the land was to be respected no doubt, but your own family—most of all when land was concerned—was worthier still!
It were better to rid the place of the bookbinder—but how? As to whether he was the legal heir or not, she would rather remain ignorant, only that, assured on the point, she would better understand how to deal with his pretension! But she could not consult sir Wilton, because she suspected him of a lingering regard for the dead wife which would naturally influence his feeling for the live son—if live he were: no doubt he had enjoyed the company of the low-born woman more than hers, for she, a woman of society, knew what was right! She had reason therefore to fear him prejudiced for any pretender! Arthur and he got on quite as well as could be expected of father and son—their differences never came to much; but on the other hand sir Wilton had a demoniacal pleasure in frustrating! To make a man he disliked furious, was honey and nuts to sir Wilton; and she knew a woman whose disappointment would be dearer to him than that of all his enemies together! It was better therefore that he should have no hint, and especially from her, of what was in the air!
Lady Ann thought herself a good woman because she never felt interest enough to be spiteful like sir Wilton; yet, very strangely, not knowing in herself what repentance meant, she judged him capable of doing her the wrong of atoning to his first wife for his neglect of her, by being good to her child! Thinking over her talk with Barbara, she could not, after all, feel certain that Richard knew, or that he had incited Barbara to take his part. But in any case it was better to get rid of him! It was dangerous to have him in the house! He might be spending his nights in trumping up evidence! At any moment he might appeal to sir Wilton as his father! But at the worst, he would be unable to prove the thing right off, and if her husband would but act like a man, they might impede the attempt beyond the possibility of its success!
One comfort was, that, she was all but confident, the child was not already baptized when stolen from Mortgrange; neither were such as would steal children likely to have them baptized; therefore the God who would not allow the unbaptized to lie in his part of the cemetery, would never favour his succession to the title and estate of Mortgrange! The fact must have its weight with Providence!—whom lady Ann always regarded us a good churchman: he would never take the part of one that had not been baptized! Besides, the fellow was sure to turn out a socialist, or anarchist, or positivist, or radical, or something worse! She would dispute his identity to the last, and assert his imposture beyond it! Her duty to society demanded that she should not give in!
Suddenly she remembered the description her husband had given her of the ugliness of the infant: this man was decidedly handsome! Then she remembered that sir Wilton had told her of a membrane between certain of his fingers—horrible creature: she must examine the impostor!
Arthur was very moody at dinner: his mother feared some echo of the same report as caused her own anxiety had reached him, and took the first opportunity of questioning him. But neither of lady Ann's sons had learned such faith in their mother as to tell her their troubles. Arthur would confess to none. She in her turn was far too prudent to disclose what was in her mind: the folly of his youth might take the turn of an unthinking generosity! the notion of an elder brother might even be welcome to him!
In another generation no questions would be asked! Many estates were in illegal possession! There was a claim superior to the legal! Theirs was amoralclaim!
The same afternoon, Richard was mending the torn title of a black-letter copy of Fox's Book of Martyrs. Vixen had forgotten her former fright, and her evil courage had returned. Opening the door of the library so softly that Richard heard nothing, she stole up behind him, and gave his elbow a great push just as, with the sharpest of penknives, he was paring the edge of a piece of old paper, to patch the title. The pen-knife slid along the bit of glass he was paring upon, and cut his other hand. The blood spouted, and some of it fell upon the title, which made Richard angry: it was an irremediable catastrophe, for the paper was too weak to bear any washing. He laid hold of the child, meaning once more to carry her from the room, and secure the door. Then first Vixen saw what she had done, and was seized with horror—not because she had hurt “the bear,” but because of the blood, the sight of which she could not endure. It was a hereditary weakness on sir Wilton's side. One of the strongest men of his family used to faint at the least glimpse of blood. There was a tradition to account for it, not old or thin enough to cast no shadow, therefore seldom alluded to. It was not, therefore, an ordinary childish dismay, but a deep-seated congenital terror, that made Vixen give one wavering scream, and drop on the floor. Richard thought she was pretending a faint in mockery of what she had done, but when he took her up, he saw that she was insensible. He laid her on a couch, rang the bell, and asked the man to take the child to her governess. The man saw blood on the child's dress, and when he reached the schoolroom with her, informed the governess that she had had an accident in the library. Miss Malliver, with one of her accomplished shrieks, dispatched him to tell lady Ann. Coming to herself in a few minutes, Vixen told a confused story of how the bear had frightened her. Lady Ann, learning that the blood was not that of her child, came to the conclusion that Richard had played upon her peculiarity to get rid of her, for Vixen, incapable of truth, did not tell that she was herself the cause of the wound whence the blood had made its appearance. Miss Malliver, who would hardly have been sorry had Vixen's throat been cut, rose in wrath, and would have swooped down the stair upon Richard.
“Leave him to me, Malliver,” said lady Ann, and rising, went down the stair. But the moment she entered the library, and saw Richard's hand tied up in his handkerchief, she bethought herself of the happy chance of satisfaction as to whether or not he was web-fingered: the absence of the peculiarity would indeed prove nothing, but the presence of it would be a warning of the worst danger: he might have had it removed, but could not have contrived to put it there!
“What have you done to yourself, Mr. Tuke?” she said, making a motion to take the wounded hand, from which at the same time she shrank with inward disgust.
“Nothing of any consequence, my lady,” answered Richard, who had risen, and stood before her. “I was using a very sharp knife, and it went into my hand. I hope Miss Victoria is better?”
“There is nothing much the matter with her,” answered her ladyship. “The sight of blood always makes her faint.”
“It is a horrid sight, my lady!” rejoined Richard, wondering at her ladyship's affability, and ready to meet any kindness. “When I was at school, I was terribly affected by it. One boy used to provoke me to fight him, and contrive that I should make his nose bleed—after which he could do what he liked with me. But I set myself to overcome the weakness, and succeeded.”
Lady Ann listened in silence, too intent on his hands to remark at the moment how the fact he mentioned bore on the question that absorbed her.
“Would you mind showing me the wound?” she said. “I am something of a surgeon.”
To her disappointment, he persisted that it was nothing. Because of the peculiarity she would gladly have missed in them, he did not like showing his hands. His mother had begged him not to meddle with the oddity until she gave her consent, promising a good reason for the request when the right time should arrive; but he was sensitive about it—probably from having been teased because of it. His comfort was, that a few slits of a sharp knife would make him like other people.
Lady Ann was foiled, therefore the more eager: why should the man be so unwilling to show his hands?
“Your work must be very interesting!” she said.
“I am fond of it, my lady,” he answered. “If I had a fortune left me, I should find it hard to drop it. There is nothing like work—and books—for enjoying life!”
“I daresay you are right.—But go on with your work. I have heard so much about it from Miss Wylder that I should like to see you at it.”
“I am sorry, my lady, but I shall be fit for next to nothing for a day or two because of this hand. I dare not attempt going on with what I am now doing.”
“Is it so very painful? You ought to have it seen to. I will send for Mr. Hurst.”
As she spoke, she turned to go to the bell. Richard had tried to interrupt her, but she would not listen. He now assured her that it was his work not his hand that he was thinking of; and said that, if Mr. Lestrange had no objection, he would take a short holiday.
“Then you would like to go home!” said her ladyship, thinking it would be so easy then to write and tell him not to come back—if only Arthur could be got to do it.
“I should like to go to my grandfather's for a few days,” answered Richard.
This was by no means what lady Ann desired, but she did not see how to oppose it.
“Well, perhaps you had better go,” she said.
“If you please, my lady,” rejoined Richard, “I must see Mr. Lestrange first. I cannot go without his permission.”
“I will speak to my son about it,” answered lady Ann, and went away, feeling that Richard would be a dangerous enemy. She did not hate him: she only regarded him as what might possibly prove an adverse force to be encountered and frustrated because of her family, and because of the right way of things—that those, namely, who had nothing should be kept from getting anything. In the meantime the only thing clear was, that he had better be got out of the neighbourhood! It was well sir Wilton had hardly seen the young man: if there was anything about him capable of rousing old memories, it were well it should not have the chance! Sir Wilton was not fond of books, and it could be no great pleasure to him to have the library set to rights; he was annoyed at being kept out of it, for he liked to smoke his cigar there, and shuddered at the presence of a working man except in the open air: she was certain he would feel nowise aggrieved if the design were abandoned midway! The only person she feared would oppose Tuke's departure, was Arthur.
She went to find him, told him what had happened to the young man, and, feeling her way, proposed that he should go to his grandfather's for a few days. Arthur started. Send him where he and Barbara would be constantly meeting! Must he for ever imagine them walking up and down that field, among the dandelions and daisies! He had discovered, he believed, all that was between them, but was not therewith satisfied: she had found out, he said to himself, that the fellow was an infidel, did not believe in God, or a resurrection—was so low that he did not care to live for ever, and she was trying to convert him. Arthur would rather he remained unconverted than thatsheshould be the means of converting him. Nor indeed would he be much injured by having the growth of such a faith as Arthur's prevented in him: Arthur prided himself in showing due respect tothe Deityby allowing that he existed. But the fellow was too clever by half, he said, and would be much too much for her. Any theory wild enough would be attractive to her, who never cared a pin-head what the rest of the world believed! She had indeed a strong tendency to pantheism, for she expected the animals to rise again—a most unpleasant notion! Doubtless it was she that sought his company; a fellow like thatcouldnot presume to seek hers! He was only laughing at her all the time! What could an animal like him care about the animals: he had not even a dog to love! He wouldnothave him go to his grandfather's! he would a thousand times rather give up the library! There should be no more bookbinding at Mortgrange! He would send the books to London to him! It would be degrading to allow personal feeling to affect his behaviour to such a fellow; he should have the work all the same, but not at Mortgrange!
So he answered his mother that he was rather tired of him, and thought they had had enough of him; the work seemed likely to be spun outad infinitum, and this was a good opportunity for getting rid of him. He was sorry, for it was the best way for the books, but he could send them to him in London, and have them done there! The man, he understood, had been making himself disagreeable too, and he did not want to quarrel with him! He was a radical, and thought himself as good as anybody: it was much best to let him go. He had at first liked him, and had perhaps shown it more than was good for the fellow, so that he had come to presume upon it, setting it down to some merit in himself. Happily he had retained the right of putting an end to the engagement when he pleased!
This was far better than lady Ann had expected. Arthur went at once to Richard, and speaking, as he thought, unconcernedly, told him they found it inconvenient to have the library used as a workshop any longer, and must make a change.
Richard was glad to hear it, thinking he meant to give him another room, and said he could work just as well anywhere else: he wanted only a dry room with a fire-place! Arthur told him he had arranged for what would be more agreeable to both parties, namely, that he should do the work at home. It would cost more, but he was prepared for that. He might go as soon as he pleased, and they would arrange by letter how the books should be sent—so many at a time!
Richard spied something more under his dismissal than the affair with Miss Vixen; but he was too proud to ask for an explanation: Mr. Lestrange was in the right of their compact. He felt aggrieved notwithstanding, and was sorry to go away from the library. He would never again have the chance of restoring such a library! He did not once think of it from the point of gain: he could always make his living! It was to him a genuine pleasure to cause any worthy volume look as it ought to look; and to make a whole straggling library of books wasted and worn, put on the complexion, uniform, and discipline of a well-conditioned company of the host of heaven, was at least an honourable task! For what are books, I venture to say, but an army-corps of the lord of hosts, at whose command are troops of all natures, after the various regions of his indwelling! Even the letter is something, for the dry bones of books are every hour coming alive to the reader in whose spirit is blowing the better spirit. Richard himself was one of such, though he did not yet know there was a better spirit. Then again, there were not a few of the books with which individually he was sorry to part. He had also had fine opportunity for study, of which he was making good use, and the loss of it troubled him. He had read some books he would hardly otherwise have been able to read, and had largely extended his acquaintance with titles.
He was sorry too not to see more of Mr. Wingfold. He was a clergyman, it was true, but not the least like any other clergyman he had seen! Richard had indeed known nothing of any other clergyman out of the pulpit; and I fear most clergymen are less human, therefore less divine, in the pulpit than out of it! Many who out of the pulpit appear men, are in it little better than hawkers of old garments, the worse for their new patches. Of the forces in action for the renovation of the world, the sale of such old clothes is one of the least potent. They do, however, serve a little, I think, even as the rags of a Neapolitan for the olives of Italy, as a sort of manure for the young olives of the garden of God.
But his far worst sorrow was leaving Miss Wylder. That was a pain, a keen pain in his heart. For, that a woman is miles above him, as a star is above a marsh-light, is no reason why a man should not love her. Nay, is it not the best of reasons for loving her? The higher in soul, and the lowlier in position he is, the more imperative and unavoidable is it that he should love her; and the absence of any thought in the direction of marriage leaves but the wider room for the love infinite. In a man capable of loving in such fashion, there are no bounds to the possibilities, no limit to the growth of love. Richard thought his soul was full, but a live soul can never be full; it is always growing larger, and is always being filled.
“Like one that hath been stunned,” he went about his preparations for departure.
“You will go by the first train in the morning,” said Arthur, happening to meet him in the stable-yard, whither Richard had gone to look if Miss Brown was in her usual stall. “I have told Robert to take you and your tools to the station in the spring-cart.”
“Thank you, sir,” returned Richard; “I shall not require the cart. I leave the house to-night, and shall send for my things to-morrow morning. I have them almost ready now.”
“You cannot go to London to-night!”
“I am aware of that, sir.”
“Then where are you going? I wish to know.”
“That is my business, sir.”
“You have no cause to show temper,” said Arthur coldly.
“I should not have shown it, sir, had you not presumed to give me orders after dismissing me,” answered Richard.
“I have not dismissed you; I mean to employ you still, only in London instead of here,” said Arthur.
“That is a matter for fresh arrangement with my father,” rejoined Richard, and left him.
Arthur felt a shadow cross him—almost like fear: he had but driven Richard to his grandfather's, and had made an enemy of him! Nor could he feel satisfied with himself; he could not get rid of the thought that what he had done was not quite the thing for a gentleman to do. His trouble was not that he had wronged Richard, but that he had wronged himself, had not acted like his ideal of himself. He did not think of what was right, but of what befitted a gentleman. Such a man is in danger of doing many things unbefitting a gentleman. For the measure of a gentleman is not a man's ideal of himself.
His uneasiness grew as day after day went by, and Barbara did not appear at Mortgrange. He was not aware that Richard saw no more of her than himself. He knew that he was at his grandfather's; he had himself seen him at work at the anvil; but he did not know that the hope in which he lingered there was vain.
Richard waited a week, but no Barbara came to the smithy. He could not endure the thought of going away without seeing her once more. He must once thank her for what she had done for him! He must let her know why he had left Mortgrange.
He would go and say good-bye to the clergyman: from him he might hear something of her!
Wingfold caught sight of him approaching the house, and himself opened the door to him. Taking him to his study, he made him sit down, and offered him a pipe.
“Thank you, sir; I don't smoke,” said Richard.
“Then don't learn. You are better without it,” answered Wingfold, and put down his own pipe.
“I came,” said Richard, “to thank you for your kindness to me, and to ask about Miss Wylder. Not having seen her for a long time, I was afraid she might be ill. I am going away.”
There was a tremor in Richard's voice, of which he was not himself aware. Wingfold noted it, pitied the youth because of the fuel he had stored for suffering, and admired him for his straightforwardness.
“I am sorry to say you are not likely to see Miss Wylder,” he answered. “Her mother is ill.”
“I hardly thought to see her, sir. Is her mother very ill?”
“Yes, very ill,” answered Wingfold.
“With anything infectious?”
“No. Her complaint is as little infectious as complaint could be; it is just exhaustion—absolute prostration, mental and nervous. She is too weak to think, and can't even feed herself. I fear her daughter will be worn out waiting on her. She devotes herself to her mother with a spirit and energy I never but once knew equalled. She never seems tired, never out of spirits. I heard a lady say she couldn't have much feeling to look cheerful when her mother was in such a state; but the lady was stupid. She would wait on her own mother almost as devotedly as Miss Wylder, but with such a lugubrious countenance that her patient might well seek refuge from it in the grave. But it is no wonder she should be in good spirits: it is the first time in her life, she says, that she has been allowed to be of any use to her mother! Then she is not suffering pain, and that makes a great difference. But more than all, her mother has grown so tender to her, and so grateful, following her constantly about the room with her eyes, that the girl says she feels in a paradise of which her mother is the tutelar divinity, raying out bliss as she lies in bed! Also her father is kinder to her mother. Little signs of tenderness pass between them—a thing she has never known before! How could she be other than happy!—But what is this you tell me about going away? The library cannot be finished!”
Wingfold had dilated on the worth of Miss Wylder, and let Richard know of her happiness, out of genuine sympathy. He knew that, next to the worship of God, the trueworshipof a fellow-creature, in the old meaning of the word, is the most potent thing for deliverance.
“No, sir,” answered Richard; “the library is left in mid ocean of decay. I don't know why they have dismissed me. The only thing clear is, that they want to be rid of me. What I have done I can't think. There is a little girl of the family—”
Here he told how Vixen had from the first behaved to him, and what things had happened in consequence, the last more particularly.
“But,” he concluded, “I do not think it can be that. Ishouldlike to know what it is.”
“Then wait,” said Wingfold. “If we only wait long enough, every reason will come out. You know I believe we are not going to stop, but are meant to go on and on for ever; and I believe the business of eternity is to bring grand hidden things out into the light; and with them will come of necessity many other things as well, even some, I daresay, that we count trifles.—But I am sorry you're going.”
“I don't see why you should be, sir!” answered Richard, his look taking from the words their seeming rudeness.
“Because I like you, and feel sure we should understand each other if only we had time,” replied the parson. “It's a grand thing to come upon one who knows what you mean. It's so much of heaven before you get there.—If you think I'm talking shop, I can't help it—and I don't care, so long as you believe I mean it. I would not have you think it the Reverend Thomas and not Thomas himself that was saying it.”
“I should never say you talked shop, sir; and I don't think you would say I was talking shop if I expatiated on the beauties of a Grolier binding! You would see I was not talking from love of gain, but love of beauty!”
“Thank you. You are a fair man, and that is even more than an honest man! I don't speak from love of religion; I don't know that I do love religion.”
“I don't understand you now, sir.”
“Look here: I am very fond of a well-bound book; I should like all my new books bound in levant morocco; but I don'tcareabout it; I could do well enough without any binding at all.”
“Of course you could, sir! and so could I, or any man that cared for the books themselves.”
“Very well! I don't care about religion much, but I could not live without my Father in heaven. I don't believe anybody can live without him.”
“I see,” said Richard.
He thought he saw, but he did not see, and could not help smiling in his heart as he said to himself, “Ihave lived a good many years without him!”
Wingfold saw the shadow of the smile, and blamed himself for having spoken too soon.
“When do you go?” he asked.
“I think I shall go to-morrow. I am at my grandfather's.”
“If I can be of use to you, let me know.”
“I will, sir; and I thank you heartily. There's nothing a man is so grateful for as friendliness.”
“The obligation is mutual,” said Wingfold.
A new experience had come to Mrs. Wylder. Her passion over the death of her son; her constant and prolonged contention with her husband; her protest against him whom she called the Almighty; the public consequence of the same; these, and the reaction from all these, had resulted in a sudden sinking of the vital forces, so that she who had been like a burning fiery furnace, was now like a heap of cooling ashes on a hearth, with the daylight coming in. She had not only never known what illness was, she did not even know what it was to feel unfit. Her consciousness of health was so clear, so unmixed, so unencountered, that she had never had a conception, a thought, a notion of what even that health was. Power and strength had so constantly seemed part of her known self, that she never thought of them: they were never far enough from her to be seen by her; she did not suspect them as other than herself, or dream that they could be disjoined from her. She could think only in the person of a strong woman; she was aware only of the being of a strong woman. Even after she had been some time helpless in bed, as often as she thought of anything she would like to do, it was the act of trying to get up and do it that made her aware afresh that she was no more the woman corresponding to her consciousness of herself. For her consciousness had never yet presented her as she really was, but always through the conditional and non-essential, so that by accidents only was she characterized to herself. Now she was too feeble even to care for the loss of her strength; her weakness went too deep to be felt as an oppression, for it met with no antagonism. Her inability to move was now no prison, and her attendant was no slave with tardy feet, but an angel of God.
For her Bab was now the mother's one delight. Her love for her lost twin had been in great part favouritism, partisanship, defence, opposition; her love for Barbara was all tenderness and no pride. In her self-lack she clung to her—as lordly dame, who had taken her castle for part of herself, and impregnable, but, its walls crumbling under the shot of the enemy, found herself defenceless before her captors, might turn and clasp her little maid, suppliant for protection. Good is it that we are not what we seem to ourselves “in our hours of ease,” for then we should never seek the Father! The loss of all that the world countsfirst thingsis a thousandfold repaid in the mere waking to higher need. It proves the presence of the divine in the lower good, that its loss is so potent. A man may send his gaze over the clear heaven, and suspect no God; when the stifling cloud comes down, folds itself about him, shuts from him the expanse of the universe, he begins to long for a hand, a sign, some shadow of presence. Mrs. Wylder had not got so far as this yet, but she had sought refuge in love; and what is the love of child, or mother, or dog, but the love of God, shining through another being—which is a being just because he shines through it. This was the one important result of her illness, that, finding refuge in the love of her daughter, she loved her daughter. The next point in her eternal growth would be to love the God who made the child she loved, and whose love shone upon her through the child. By nature she was a strong woman whom passion made weak. It sucked at her will till first it hardened it to a more selfish determination, then pulped it to a helpless obstinacy. The persistence that goes with inclination has its force only from the weakness of pride and the mean worship of self; it is the opposite of that free will which is the reflex of the divine will, and the ministering servant-power to all freedom, which resists and subdues the self of inclination, and is obedient only to the self of duty. Where the temple of God has no windows, earthquake must rend the roof, that the sunlight may enter. Barbara's mother lay broken on her couch that the spirit of the daughter might enter the soul of her mother—and with it the spirit of him who, in the heart of her daughter, made her that which she was.
Her illness had lasted a month, when one day her husband, at Barbara's prayer coming to see her, she feebly put out her hand asking for his, and for a moment the divine child in the man opened its heavenly eyes. He took the offered hand kindly, faltered a gentle-sounding commonplace or two, and left her happier, with a strange little bird fluttering in his own bosom. There are eggs of all the heavenly birds in our bosoms, and the history of man is the incubation and hatching of these eggs.
She began to recover, but the recovery was a long one. As soon as she thought her well enough, Barbara told her that Mr. Wingfold had been to inquire after her almost every day, and asked whether she would not like to see him. Mrs. Wylder was in a quiescent condition, non-combatant, involving no real betterment, occasioned only by the absence of impulse. But such a condition gives opportunity for the good, the gentle, the loving, to be felt, and so recognized. The sufferer resembles a child that has not been tempted, whose trial is yet to come. With recovery, fresh claim will be put in by the powers of good. This claim will be resisted by old habit, resuming its force in the return of physical and psychical health,—and then comes the tug of war. For no one can be saved, as he who knows his master would be saved, without the will being supreme in the matter, without the choosing to fulfill all righteousness, to resist the wrong, to do the right. Wingfold never built much on bed-repentance. The aphorism of the devil sick and the devil well, is only too true. But he welcomed the fresh opportunity for a beginning. He knew that pain and sickness do rub some dirt from the windows toward the infinite, and that things of the old unknown world whence we came, do sometimes look in at them, a moment now, and a moment then, waking new old things that lie in every child born into the world. I seem to see the great marshes where the souls go wandering about after the bog-fires; a kiss blown from the walls of the city comes wavering down among them; it flits hither and thither with the dead-lights; it finds a soul with a spot on which it can alight; it settles there; and kisses it alive. God is the God of patience, and waits and waits for the child who keeps him waiting and will not open the door.
Wingfold went to see her, but took good care to press nothing upon her. He let her give him the lead. She spoke of her weakness, and the parson drew out her moan. She praised her Barbara, and the parson praised her again in words that opened the mother's eyes to new beauties in her daughter. She mentioned her weariness, and the parson spoke of the fields and the soft wind and the yellow shine of the butter-cups in the grass. Her heart was gently drawn to the man whose eyes were so keen, whose voice was so mellow and strong, and whose words were so lovely sweet, saying the things that were in her own heart, but would not come out.
One day he proposed to read something, and she consented. I will not say what he read, for I would avoid waking controversy as to fitness. He thought he knew what he was about. The good in atruebook, he would say, is the best protection against what may not be so good in it; its wrong as well as its right may wake the conscience: the thoughts of a book accuse and excuse one another. In saying so, he took the true reader for granted; to an untrue reader the truth itself is untrue. The general sense of honour, he would say, has been stimulated not a little by the story of the treachery of Jael. Nor was it any wonder he should succeed in interesting Mrs. Wylder, for she had a strong brain as well as a big heart. More than half her faults came of an indignant sense of wrong. She had passionately loved her husband once, but he had soon ceased even the show of returning her affection,
And to be wroth with one we loveDoth work like madness in the brain.
After a fierce struggle against the lessons life would have her taught, a struggle continued to her fortieth year, she was now at length a pupil in another school, where the schoolroom was her bed, the book of Quiet her first study, her two attendants a clergyman and her own daughter, and her one teacher, God himself. In that schoolroom, the world began to open to her a little. Among men who could, without seeming to aim at it, make another think, I have not met the equal of Wingfold. His mode was that of the open-hearted apostle, who took men by guile. He called out the thoughts lurking in their souls, and set them dealing with those thoughts, not with him: they were slow to discover that he was a divine musician, playing upon the holy strings of their hearts; they thought the tunes came alive in their own air—as indeed they did, only another hand woke them. To work thus, he had to lay bare not a little of his own feeling, but where it was brotherly to show feeling, he counted it unchristian to hide it. Feeling by itself, however, that came and went without correspondent action, he counted not only weak and mawkish, but tending to the devilish.
Barbara was happy all day long. Life seemed about to blossom into a great flower of scarlet and gold. She had learned from the parson that the bookbinder was gone, but was at the time too busy and too anxious to question him as to the cause of his going. Till her mother was well, it was enough to know that Richard had wanted to see her, doubtless to tell her all about it. She often thought of him, what he had done for her, and what she had tried to do for him, and was certain he would one day believe in God. She did not suspect any quarrel with the people at Mortgrange. She thought perhaps the secret concerning him had come out, and he did not choose to remain in a house the head of which, if lady Ann's tale was true, had so bitterly wronged his mother. As soon as she was able she would go and hear of him from his grandfather! There was no hurry! She would certainly see him again before long! And he would be sure to write! It did not occur to her that a man in his position would hardly venture to approach her again, without some renewed approach on her part; and for a long time she was nowise uneasy.
The hope alive in Wingfold made him a true consoler; and the very sight of him was a strength to Barbara. She regarded him with profound reverence, and his wife as most enviable of women: could she not learn from his mouth the rights of a thing, the instant she opened hers to ask them? Barbara did not know how much the sympathy, directness, and dear common sense of Helen, had helped to keep awake, support, and nourish the insight of her husband. She did not know, good and powerful as Wingfold must have been had he never married, how much wiser, more useful, and more aspiring he had grown because Helen was Helen, and his wife, sent as certainly as ever angel in the old time. The one fault she had in the eyes of her husband was, that she was so indignant with affectation or humbug of any sort, as hardly to give the better thing that might coexist with it, the needful chance.
So long as evil comes to the front, it appears an interminable, unconquerable thing. But all the time there may be a change, positive as inexplicable, at the very door. How is it that a child begins to be good? Upon what fulcrum rests the knife-edge of alteration? As undistinguishable is the moment in which the turn takes place; equally perplexing to keenest investigation the part of the being in which the renovation commences. Who shall analyze repentance, as a force, or as a phenomenon! You cannot see it coming! Before you know, there it is, and the man is no more what he was; his life is upon other lines! The wind hath blown. We saw not whence it came, or whither it went, but the new birth is there. It began in the spiritual infinitesimal, where all beginnings are. The change was begun in Mrs. Wylder. But the tug of her war was to come.
Lady Ann had not once been to see her since first calling when she arrived. Naturally she did not take to her. In the eyes of lady Ann, Mrs. Wylder was insufferable—a vulgar, arrogant, fierce woman, purse-proud and ignorant. But a keen moral eye would have perceived lady Ann vastly inferior to Mrs. Wylder in everything right-womanly. Lady Ann was the superior by the changeless dignity of her carriage, but her self-assured pre-eminence was offensive, and her drawling deliberation far more objectionable than Mrs. Wylder's abrupt movements, or the rough and ready speech that accompanied her eager dart at the gist of a matter. Even the look that would kill a man if it could, never roused such hate as sprang to meet the icy stare of her passionless ladyship. Many a man with no admiration of the florid, would have sought refuge in Mrs. Wylder's plump face, vivid with an irritable humanity, from the moveless pallor of lady Ann's delicately formed cheek, and the pinched thinness of her fine, poverty-stricken nose. Oh those pinched nostrils, the very outcry of inward meanness! will they ever open to the full tide of a surging breath? What vital interweaving of gladness and grief will at length make strong and brave and unselfish the heart that sent out those nostrils? Less than a divine shame will never make it the heart of a fearless, bountiful, redeeming woman.
Mrs. Wylder was nowise annoyed that lady Ann did not call a second time. She did not care enough to mind, and preferred not seeing her. They had in common as near nothing as humanity permitted. “Stuck-up kangaroo!” she cried her.
“I'll lay you my best sapphire,” she said to her daughter, in the hearing of Wingfold, whose presence she had forgotten, “that for the last three hundred years not a woman of her family has suckled her own young!”
Neither mother nor daughter had shown the least deference to lady Ann's exalted position. The first movement of her dislike to Mrs. Wylder was caused by her laughing and talking as unrestrainedly in her presence as in that of the doctor's wife, who happened to be in the room when lady Ann entered. But now that danger, not to say ruin, appeared in the distance, she must, for the sake of her son, wronged by his father's having married another woman before his mother, neglect no chance! Arthur had been to Wylder Hall repeatedly, but Barbara had not seen him! She must go herself, and pay some court to the young heiress! She was anxious also to learn whether any chagrin was concerned in her continuous absence from Mortgrange.
Barbara received her heartily, and they talked a little, lady Ann imagining herself very pleasing: she rarely condescended to make herself agreeable, and measured her success by her exertion. She found Barbara in such good spirits that she pronounced her heartless—not to her son, or to any but herself, who would not have come near her but for the money to be got with her. She begged her, notwithstanding, for the sake of her complexion, to leave her mother an hour or two now and then, and ride over to Mortgrange. Incessant watching would injure her health, and health was essential to beauty! Barbara protested that nothing ever hurt her; that she was the only person she knew fit to be a nurse, because she was never ill. When her ladyship, for once oblivious of her manners, grew importunate, Barbara flatly refused.
“You must pardon me, lady Ann,” she said; “I cannot, and I will not leave my mother.”
Then lady Ann thought it might be wise to make a little more of the mother to whom she seemed so devoted. She had imagined the daughter of the coarse woman must feel toward her as she did, and suspected a coarser grain in the daughter than she had supposed, because she was not disgusted with her mother. She did not know that eyes of love see the true being where other eyes see only its shadow; and shadows differ a good deal from their bodies.
But meeting Mr. Wylder in the avenue as she returned, and stopping her carriage to speak to him, lady Ann changed her mind, and resolved to curry favour with the husband instead of the wife. For hitherto she had scarcely seen Mr. Wylder, and knew about him only by unfavourable hearsay; but she was charmed with him now, and drew from him a promise to go and dine at Mortgrange.
Bab went singing back to her mother, who was never so ill that she did not like to hear her voice. She could not always bear it in the room, but outside she was never tired of it. So Bab went about the house singing like a mavis. But she never passed a servant, male or female, without ceasing her song to say a kind word; and her mother, who, now that she had got on a little, lay listening with her keenest of ears, knew by the checks and changes of Bab's song, something of what was going on in the house. If one asked Bab what made her so happy, she would answer that she had nothing to make her unhappy; and there was more philosophy in the answer than may at first appear. For certainly the normal condition of humanity is happiness, and the thing that should be enough to make us happy, is simply the absence of anything to make us unhappy.
“Everything,” she would answer another time, “is making me happy.”
“I think Iamhappiness,” she said once.
How could shenaturallybe other than happy, seeing she came of happiness! “Il lieto fattore,” says Dante; “whose happy-making sight,” says Milton.
Mr. Wylder went and dined with sir Wilton and lady Ann. The latter did her poor best to please him, and was successful. It had always been an annoyance to Mr. Wylder that his wife was not a lady. In the bush he did not feel it; but now he saw, as well as knew, wherein she was inferior, and did not see wherein she excelled. It was the more consolation to him that lady Ann praised his daughter, her beauty, her manners, her wit—praised her for everything, in short, that she thought hers, and for some things she thought were not hers. But she hinted that it would be of the greatest benefit to Barbara to have the next season in London. The girl had met nobody, and might, in her ignorance and innocence, being such an eager, impetuous, warm-hearted creature, with her powers of discrimination of course but little cultivated, make unsuitable friendships that would lead to entanglement; while, well chaperoned, she might become one of the first ladies in the county. She took care to let her father know at the same time, or think he knew, that, although her son would be only a baronet, he would be rich, for the estates were in excellent condition and free of encumbrance; and hinted that there was now a fine chance of enlarging the property, neighbouring land being in the market at a low price.
Mr. Wylder had indeed hoped for a higher match, but lady Ann, being an earl's daughter, had influence with him. The remaining twin was so delicate that it was very doubtful if he would succeed: if he did not, and land could be had between to connect the two properties of Mortgrange and Wylder, the estate would be far the finest in the county; when, as lady Ann hinted, means might be used to draw down the favour of Providence in the form of a patent of nobility.
To lady Ann, London was the centre of love-making, and Arthur, she said to herself, would show to better advantage there than in the country. The place where she had herself been nearest to falling in love, was a ball-room: the heat apparently had half thawed her.
Mr. Wylder thought lady Ann was right, and the best thing for Barbara would be to go to London: lady Ann would present her at court, and she would doubtless be the belle of the season. Her chance would be none the worse of making a better match than with Arthur Lestrange.
It may seem odd that a like reflection did not occur to lady Ann: far more eligible men than her son might well be drawn to such a bit of sunshine as Barbara; but just what in Barbara was most attractive, lady Ann was least capable of appreciating.