There & Back

CHAPTER LV. MISS BROWN

The same evening Barbara rode to the smithy, in the hope of hearing some news of Richard from his grandfather. The old man was busy at the anvil when he heard Miss Brown’s hoofs on the road. He dropped his hammer, flung the tongs on the forge, and leaving the iron to cool on the anvil, went to meet her.

“How do you do, grandfather?” said Barbara, with unconscious use of the appellation.

Simon was well pleased to be called grandfather, but too politic and too well bred to show his pleasure.

“As well as hard work can help me to. How are you yourself, my pretty?” returned Simon.

“As well as nothing to do—except nursing poor Mark—will let me,” she answered. “Please can you tell me anything about Richard yet?”

“Can you keep a secret, honey?” rejoined Simon. “I ain’t sure as I’m keeping strict within the law, but if I didn’t think you fit, I shouldn’t say a word.”

“Don’t tell me, if it be anything I ought to tell if I knew it.”

“If you can show me you ought to tell any one, I will release you from your promise. But perhaps you feel you ought to tell everything to your mother?”

“No, not other people’s secrets. But I think I won’t have it. I don’t like secrets. I’m frightened at them.”

“Then I’ll tell you at my own risk, for you’re the right sort to trust, promise or no promise. I only hope you will not tell without letting me know first; because then I might have to do something else by way of—what do they call it when you take poison, and then take something to keep it from hurting you?—Richard’s gone to college!”

Bab slid from Miss Brown’s back, flung her arms, with the bridle on one of them, round the blacksmith’s neck, and, heedless of Miss Brown’s fright, jumped up, and kissed the old man for the good news.

“Miss! miss! your clean face!” cried the blacksmith.

“Oh Richard! Richard! you will be happy now!” she said, her voice trembling with buried tears. “—But will he ever shoe Miss Brown again, grandfather?”

“Many’s the time, I trust!” answered Simon. “He’ll be proud to do it. If not, he never was worth a smile from your sweet mouth.”

“He’ll be a great man some day!” she laughed, with a little quiver of the sweet mouth.

“He’s a good man now, and I don’t care,” answered the smith. “As long as son of mine can look every man in the face, I don’t care whether it be great or small he is.”

“But, please, Mr. Armour,” said Bab timidly, “wouldn’t it be better still if he could look God in the face?”

“You’re right there, my pretty dove!” replied the old man; “only a body can’t say everything out in a breath!—But you’re right, you are right!” he went on. “I remember well the time when I thought I had nothing to be ashamed of; but the time came when I was ashamed of many things, and I’d done nothing worse in the meantime either! When a man first gets a peep inside himself, he sees things he didn’t look to see—and they stagger him a bit! Some horses have their hoofs so shrunk and cockled they take the queerest shoes to set them straight; an’ them shoes is the troubles o’ this life, I take it.—Now mind, I ain’t told you what college he’s gone to—nor whether it be at Oxford or at Cambridge, or away in Scotland or Germany—and you don’t know! And if you don’t feel bound to mention the name of the place, I’d be obliged to you not to. But I will let him know that I’ve told you what sort of a place he’s at, because he couldn’t tell you himself, being he’s bound to hold his tongue.”

Barbara went home happy: his grandfather recognized the bond between them! As to Richard, she had no fear of his forgetting her.

With more energy still, she went about her duties; and they seemed to grow as she did them. As the end of Mark’s sickness approached, he became more and more dependent upon her, and only his mother could take her place with him. He loved his father dearly, but his father never staid more than a moment or two in the sick-chamber. Mark at length went away to find his twin; and his mother and Barbara wept, but not all in sorrow.

One morning, the week after Mark’s death, Mr. Wylder desired Barbara to go with him to his study—where indeed about as much study went on as in a squirrel’s nest—and there, after solemn prologue as to its having been right and natural while she was but a girl with a brother that she should be allowed a great deal of freedom, stated that now, circumstances being changed, such freedom could no longer be given her: she was now sole heiress, and must do as an heir would have had to do, namely, consult the interests of the family. In those interests, he continued, it was necessary he should strengthen as much as possible his influence in the county; it was time also that, for her own sake, she should marry; and better husband or fitter son-in-law than Mr. Lestrange could not be desired: he was both well behaved and good-looking, and when Mortgrange was one with Wylder, would have by far the finest estate in the county!

Filial obligation is a point upon which those parents lay the heaviest stress who have done the least to develop the relation between them and their children. The first duty is from the parent to the child: this unfulfilled, the duty of the child remains untaught.

“I am sorry to go against you, papa,” said Barbara, “but I cannot marry Mr. Lestrange!”

“Stuff and nonsense! Why not?”

“Because I do not love him.”

“Fiddlesticks! I did not love your mother when I married her!—You don’t dislike him, I know!—Now don’t tell me you do, for I shall not believe you!”

“He is always very kind to me, and I am sorry he should want what is not mine to give him.”

“Not yours to give him! What do you mean by that? If it is not yours, it is mine! Have you not learned yet, that when I make up my mind to a thing, that thing is done! And where I have a right, I am not one to waive it!”

Where husband and wife are not one, it is impossible for the daughter to be one with both, or perhaps with either; and the constant and foolish bickering to which Barbara had been a witness throughout her childhood, had tended rather to poison than nourish respect. Whether Barbara failed to yield as much as Mr. Wylder had a right to claim, I leave to the judgment of my reader, reserving my own, and remarking only that, if his judgment be founded on principles differing from mine, our judgments cannot agree. The idea of parent must be venerated, and may cast a glow upon the actual parent, himself nowise venerable, so that the heart of a daughter may ache with the longing to see her father such that she could love and worship him as she would; but when it comes to life and action, the will of such a parent, if it diverge from what seems to the child true and right, ought to weigh nothing. A parent is not a maker, is not God. We must leave father and mother and all for God, that is, for what is right, which is his very will—only let us be sure it is for God, and not for self. If the parent has been the parent of good thoughts and right judgments in the child, those good thoughts and right judgments will be on the parent’s side: if he has been the parent of evil thoughts and false judgments, they may be for him or against him, but in the end they will work solely for division. Any general decay of filial manners must originate with the parents.

“I am not a child. I am a woman,” said Barbara; “and I owe it to him who made me a woman, to take care of her.”

“Mind what you say. I have rights, and will enforce them.”

“Over my person?” returned Barbara, her eyes sending out a flash that reminded him of her mother, and made him the angrier.

“If you do not consent here and now,” he said sternly, “to marry Mr. Lestrange—that is, if, after your mother’s insolence to lady Ann.—”

“My mother’s insolence to lady Ann!” exclaimed Barbara, drawing herself, in her indignation, to the height of her small person: but her father would rush to his own discomfiture.

“—if, as I say,” he went on, “he should now condescend to ask you—I swear—”

“You had better not swear, papa!”

“—I swear you shall not have a foot of my land.”

“Oh! that is all? There you are in your right, and I have nothing to say.”

“You insolent hussy! You won’t like it when you find it done!”

“It will be the same as if Mark had lived.”

“It’s that cursed money of your mother’s makes you impudent!”

“If you could leave me moneyless, papa, it would make no difference. A woman that can shoe her own horse,—”

“Shoe her own horse!” cried her father.

“Yes, papa!—You couldn’t!—And I made two of her shoes the last time! Wouldn’t any woman that can do that, wouldn’t she—to save herself from shame and disgust—to be queen over herself—wouldn’t she take a place as house-maid or shop-girl rather than marry the man she didn’t love?”

Mr. Wylder saw he had gone too far.

“You know more than is good!” he said. “But don’t you mistake: you’re mother’s money is settled on you, but your father is your trustee!”

“My father is a gentleman!” rejoined Barbara—not so near the truth as she believed.

“Take you care how you push a gentleman,” rejoined her father.

“Not to love is not to marry—not if the man was a prince!” persisted Barbara.