There & Back

He had time to ponder, for she did not anew swim into his ken for three days. He wondered whether he had displeased her, but could think of nothing he had said or done amiss. He must be very careful not to offend her with the least roughness in word or manner, lest he should so lose the chance of helping her! It was the main part of his creed, as gathered from his adoptive father, that a man must do something for his neighbour: Miss Wylder was his neighbour; what better thing could he do for her than make her free of the greatest joy he knew?

Barbara had quite as much liberty as was good. Her mother sat in a darkened room, and took morphia; her father, to occupy his leisure, had begun to repair an old house on the estate with his own hands. Nobody heeded Barbara; she did as she pleased, going and coming as in the colony. A favourite with all about the place, she had never to use authority. Every one, for very love, was at her service. Whatever preposterous thing, at whatever unearthly moment, she might have wanted, it would have been ready—her mare at midnight, her breakfast at noon, a cow in the library to draw from. There was little regularity in the house; every one wanted to do what was right in his own eyes; but every one was ready to see right with the eyes of Barbara.

Home was, nevertheless, as one may well believe, a terribly dull place to her; and as, for some occult reason, Theodora Lestrange had taken a fancy to her, as sir Wilton was charmed with her, and lady Ann—for reasons—had little to say against her, she was at Mortgrange as much as she pleased—never too much even for Arthur, whose propriety, rather insular, a little provincial, and sometimes pedantic, she would shock twenty times a day; for he was fascinated by her grace and playfulness, though he declared he would as soon think of marrying a humming-bird as Barbara. He tried for a while to throw his net over her, for he would fain have tamed her to come at his call: but he soon arrived at the conclusion that nothing but the troubles of life would tame her, and then it would be a pity. She was a fine creature, he said, but hardly human; and for his part he preferred a woman to a fay!

But such was the report of her riches, that sir Wilton and lady Ann were both ready to welcome her as a daughter-in-law. Sir Wilton was delighted with her gaiety and the sharp readiness of her clever retort. All he regretted in her lack of an English education was that her speech was not quite that of a lady—on which point sir Wilton had not always been so fastidious. For the rest, intellectual development was of so little interest to him that he never suspected Barbara of having more than a usual share of intellect to develop. She was just the wife for the future baronet, he was once heard to say—though how he came once to say it I cannot think, for never before had he betrayed a consciousness that he would not be the present baronet for ever and ever. So long as he did not feel the approach of death, he would never think of dying, and then he would do his best to forget it. He seemed sometimes to grudge his son the dainty little wife Barbara would make him: “The rascal will be the envy of the clubs!” he said.

CHAPTER XVIII. MRS. WYLDER

Mr. Wylder was lord of the manor, and chief land-owner, though his family had never been the most influential, in the parish next that in which lay Mortgrange. He was not much fitted for an English squire. He wished to stand well with his neighbours, but lacked the geniality which is the very body, the outside expression of humanity. Proud of his family, he had the peculiar fault of the Goth—that of arrogance, with its accompanying incapacity for putting oneself in the place of another. Mr. Wylder possessed a huge inability of conceiving the manner in which what he did or said must affect the person to whom he did or said it. So entirely was he thus disqualified for social interchange, that he remained supremely satisfied in his consequent isolation, hardly recognized it, and never doubted himself a perfect gentleman. Had any diffidence enabled him to perceive the reflection of himself in the mirroring minds of those around him, his self-opinion might have been troubled; but when he did begin to discover that the neighbours did not desire his company, he set it down to stupid prejudice against him because he had been so long absent from the country. He did not hunt, and when he went out shooting, which was seldom, he went alone, or with a game-keeper only. In fact he was so careless, that most men who had once shot with him, ever after gave him a wide berth when they saw him with a gun in his hand. On one occasion he shot his wife’s twin in the calf of the leg; which, however, made her think no worse of his shooting, for she could never be persuaded he had not done it intentionally.

For a short time before leaving Australasia, the family had spent money in one of its larger cities, and had been a good deal followed; but neither there nor in England did they find that wealth could do everything. A few other qualities, not by any means of the highest order, are required by nearly all social agglomerations, and with some of these Mrs. Wylder was as scantily equipped as her husband with others.

Resenting the indifference of his neighbours, and not caring to remove it, Mr. Wylder betook himself to the exercise of certain constructive faculties, not unfrequently developed in circumstances in which a man has to be his own Jack-of-all-trades: finding a certain old manor-house which he had haunted as a boy, chiefly for the sake of its attendant goose-berries and apples, unoccupied and fallen into decay, he set about restoring it with his own hands. But it had not occurred to him that, although even in England it is not necessary, as they did at Lagado, in building to begin with the roof, in England especially is it necessary in repairing to begin with the roof. While the floors were rotting away, he would be busy panelling the walls, regardless of a drop falling steadily in the middle of the bench at which he was working.

The clergyman of the parish, one Thomas Wingfold, a man who loved his fellow, and would fain give him of the best he had, a man who was a Christian first, which means a man, and then a churchman, had now, for almost three years, often puzzled brain and heart together to find what could be done for these his new parishioners—from the world’s point of view the first, yet in reality as insignificant as any he had; and not yet did he know how to get near them. He had not yet seen a glimmer of religion in the man, and had seen more than a glimmer of something else in the woman. Between him and either of them their common humanity had not yet shown a spark. What he had seen of the girl he liked, but he had not seen much.

It was a fine frosty day in February, about twelve o’clock, when Mr. Wingfold walked up the avenue of Scotch firs to call on Mrs. Wylder. He was dressed like any country gentleman in a tweed suit, carried a rather strong stick, and wore a soft felt hat, looking altogether more of a squire than a clergyman—for which his parishioners mostly liked him the better. Pious people in general seem to regard religion as a necessary accompaniment of life; to Wingfold it was life itself; with him religion must be all, or could be nothing. He did not accept the good news of God; he strained it to his heart, and was jubilant over it. He was a rather square-looking man, with projecting brows, and a grizzled beard. The upper part of his face would look dark while a smile was hovering about his mouth; at another time his mouth would look solemn, almost severe, while a radiance, as from some white cloud nobody could see, illuminated his forehead. He generally walked with his eyes on the ground, but would every now and then straighten his back, and gaze away to the horizon, as if looking for the far-off sails of help. He was noted among his farmers for his common sense, as they called it, and among the gentry for a certain frankness of speech, which most of them liked.

He rang the door-bell of the Hall, and asked if Mrs. Wylder was at home. The man hesitated, looked in the clergyman’s face, and smiling oddly, answered, “Yes, sir.”

“Only you don’t think she will care to see me!”

“Well, you know, sir,—”

“I do. Go up, and announce me.”

The man led the way, and Mr. Wingfold followed. He opened the door of a room on the first floor, and announced him. Mr. Wingfold entered immediately, that there might be no time for words with the man and a message of refusal.

Discouragement encountered him on the threshold. The lady sat by a blazing fire, with her back to a window through which the frosty sun of February was sending lovely prophecies of the summer. She was in a gorgeous dressing-gown, her plentiful black hair twisted carelessly, but with a show of defiance, round her head. She was almost a young woman still, with a hardness of expression that belonged neither to youth nor age. She sat sideways to the door, so that without turning her head she must have seen the parson enter, but she did not move a visible hair’s-breadth. Her feet, in silk stockings and shabby slippers, continued perched on the fender. She made no sign of greeting when the parson came in front of her, but a scowl dark as night settled on her low forehead and black eyebrows, and her face shortened and spread out. Wingfold approached her with the air of a man who knew himself unwelcome but did not much mind—for he had not to care about himself.

“Good morning, Mrs. Wylder!” he said. “What a lovely morning it is!”

“Is it? I know nothing about it. You have a brutal climate!”

He knew she regarded him as the objectionable agent of a more objectionable Heaven.

“You would not dislike it so much if you met it out of doors. A walk on a day like this, now,—”

“Pray who authorized you to come and offer me advice I Have I concealed from you, Mr. Wingfold, that your presence gives me no pleasure?”

“You certainly have not! You have been quite honest with me. I did not come in the hope of pleasing you—though I wish I could.”

“Then perhaps you will explain why you are here!”

“There are visits that must be made, even with the certainty of giving annoyance!” answered Wingfold, rather cheerfully.

“That means you consider yourself justified in forcing your way into my room, before I am dressed, with the simple intention of making yourself disagreeable!”

“If I were here on my own business, you might well blame me! But what would you say to one of your men who told you he dared not go your message for fear of the lightning?”

“I would tell him he was a coward, and to go about his business.”

“That, then, is what I don’t want to be told!”

“And for fear of being told it, you dare me!”

“Well—you may put it so;—yes.”

“I don’t like you the worse for your courage. There’s more than one man would face half a dozen bush-rangers rather than a woman I know!”

“I believe it. But it makes no extravagant demand on my courage. I am not afraid of you. I owe you nothing—except any service worth doing for you!”

“Let that blind down: the sun’s putting the fire out.”

“It’s a pity to put the sun out in such a brutal climate. He does the fire no harm.”

“Don’t tell me!”

“Science says he does not.”

“He puts the fire out, I tell you!”

“I do not think so.”

“I’ve seen it with my own eyes. God knows which is the greater humbug—Science or Religion!—Are you going to pull that blind down?” Wingfold lowered the blind.

“Now look here!” said Mrs. Wylder. “You’re not afraid of me, and I’m not afraid of you!—It’s a low trade, is yours.”

“What is my trade?”

“What is your trade?—Why, to talk goody! and read goody! and pray goody! and be goody, goody!—Ugh!”

“I’m not doing much of that sort at this moment, any way!” rejoined Wingfold with a laugh.

“You know this is not the place for it!”

“Would you mind telling me which is the place to read a French novel in?”

“Church: there!”

“What would you do if I were to insist on reading a chapter of the Bible here?”

“Look!” she answered, and rising, snatched a saloon-pistol from the chimney-piece, and took deliberate aim at him.

Wingfold looked straight down the throat of the thick barrel, and did not budge.

“—I would shoot you with that,” she went on, holding the weapon as I have said. “It would kill you, for I can shoot, and should hit you in the eye, not on the head. I shouldn’t mind being hanged for it. Nothing matters now!”