There & Back

“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 make me miserable. But I will not believe 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 it calls him 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 there can be 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 say that thing to her, for you don’t know it.”

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 because I know 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.

CHAPTER XXVIII. BARBARA AND LADY ANN

As they went, neither said much. Both seemed to avoid the subject of their conversation as they came. They talked of poetry and fiction, and did not differ. Though Barbara there also had precious insights, happily she had no opinions.

When they reached a certain point, Richard drew back, and, from a coign of vantage, saw Barbara try the study-window and fail. He then followed her as she went round to the door, and, still covertly, saw her ring the bell. The door was opened with what seemed to him a portentous celerity, and she disappeared. He turned away into the park, and wandered about, revolving many things, till by slow gradations the sky’s gray idea unfolded to a brilliant conviction, and, lo, there was the morning, not to be controverted! But he took care to let the house not only come awake, but come to its senses, before he sought admission. When it seemed well astir, he rang the bell; and when the door, after some delay, was opened, he went straight to the library, and was fairly at work by five o’clock.