There & Back

She went to her mother’s room, but said nothing of what had passed. She would not heat those ovens of wrath, the bosoms of her parents.

The next morning she ran to saddle Miss Brown. To her astonishment, her friend was not in her box, nor in any stall in the stable; neither was any one visible of whom to ask what had become of her; for the first time in her life, everybody had got out of Barbara’s way. In the harness-room, however, she came upon one of the stable-boys. He was in tears. When he saw her, he started and turned to run, looking as if he had had a piece of Miss Brown for breakfast, but she stopped him.

“Where is Miss Brown?” she said.

“Don’ know, miss.”

“Who knows, then?”

“P’raps master, miss.”

“What are you crying for?”

“Don’ know, miss.”

“That’s not true. Boys don’t cry without knowing why?”

“Well, miss, I ain’t sure what I’m crying for.”

“Speak out, man! Don’t be foolish.”

“Master give me a terrible cut, miss!”

“Did you deserve it?”

“Don’ know, miss.”

“You don’t seem to know anything this morning!”

“No, miss!”

“What did your master give you the cut for?”

“‘Cause I was cryin’.”

Here he burst into a restrained howl.

“What were you crying for?”

“Because Miss Brown was gone.”

“And you cried without knowing where she was gone?” said Barbara, turning almost sick with apprehension.

“Yes, miss,” affirmed the miserable boy.

“Is she dead?”

“No, miss, she ain’t dead; she’s sold!”

The words were not yet out of his mouth when he turned and bolted.

“That’s my gentleman-papa!” said Barbara to herself before she could help it. Had she been any girl but Barbara, she would have cried like the boy.

Not once from that moment did she allude to Miss Brown in the hearing of father or servant.

One day her mother asked her why she never rode, and she told her. The wrath of the mother was like that of a tigress. She sprang to her feet, and bounded to the door. But when she reached it, Barbara was between her and the handle.

“Mother! mother dear!” she pleaded.

The mother took her by the shoulders, and thought to fling her across the room. But she was not so strong as she had been, and she found the little one hard as nails: she could not move her an inch.

“Get out of my way!” she cried, “I want to kill him!”

“Mammy dear, listen! It’s a month ago! I said nothing—for love-sake!”

“Love-sake! I think I hear you! Dare to tell me you love that wretch of a father of yours! I will kill you if you say you love him!”

Barbara threw her arms round her mother’s neck, and said, “Listen, mammy: I do love him a little bit: but it wasn’t for love of him I held my tongue.”

“Bah! Your bookbinder-fellow! What has he to do with it?”

“Nothing at all. It wasn’t for him either, it was for God’s sake I held my peace, mammy. If all his children quarrelled like you and dad, what a house he would have! It was for God’s sake I said nothing; and you know, mammy, you’ve made it up with God, and you mustn’t go and be naughty again!”

The mother stood silent and still. It seemed for an instant as if the old fever had come back, for she shivered. She turned and went to her chair, sat down, and again was still. A minute after, her forehead flushed like a flame, turned white, then flushed and paled again several times. Then she gave a great sigh, and the conflict was over. She smiled, and from that moment she also never said a word about Miss Brown.

But in the silence of her thought, Barbara suffered, for what might not be the fate of Miss Brown! No one but a genuine lover of animals would believe how she suffered. In her mind’s eye she kept seeing her turn her head with sharp-curved neck in her stall, or shoot it over the door of her box, looking and longing for her mistress, and wondering why she did not come to pat her, or feed her, or saddle her for the joyous gallop across grass and green hedge; and the heart of her mistress was sore for her. But at length one day in church, they read the psalm in which come the words, “Thou, Lord, shalt save both man and beast!” and they went to her soul. She reflected that if Miss Brown was in trouble, it might be for the saving of Miss Brown: she had herself got enough good from trouble to hope for that! For she heartily believed the animals partakers in the redemption of Jesus Christ; and she fancied perhaps they knew more about it than we think,—the poor things are so silent! Anyhow she saw that the reasonable thing was to let God look after his own; and if Miss Brown was not his, how could she be?

But the mother was sending all over the country to find who had Miss Brown; and she had not inquired long before she learned that she was in the stables at Mortgrange. There she knew she would be well treated, and therefore told Barbara the result of her inquiries.

CHAPTER LVI. WINGFOLD AND BARBARA

Barbara went yet oftener to Mr. and Mrs. Wingfold. By this time, through Simon Armour, they knew something about Richard, but none of them all felt at liberty to talk about him.

Barbara had now a better guide in her reading than Richard. True reader as he had been, Wingfold’s acquaintance both with literature and its history, that is, its relation to the development of the people, was as much beyond the younger man’s as it ought to be. What in Barbara Richard had begun well, Wingfold was carrying on better.

With his help she was now studying, to no little advantage, more than one subject connected with the main interest common to her and Richard: and she thought constantly of what Richard would say, and how she would answer him. Hence, naturally, she had the more questions to put to her tutor. Now Wingfold had passed through all Richard’s phases, and through some that were only now beginning to show in him; therefore he was well prepared to help her—although there was this difference between the early moral conditions of the two men, that Wingfold had been prejudiced in favour of much that he found it impossible to hold, whereas Richard had been prejudiced against much that ought to be cast away.

Richard suffered not a little at times from his enforced silence: what might not happen because he must not speak? But hearing nothing discouraging from his grandfather, he comforted himself in hope. He knew that in him he had a strong ally, and that Barbara loved the hot-hearted blacksmith, recognizing in him a more genuine breeding, as well as a far greater capacity, than in either sir Wilton or her father. He toiled on doing his duty, and receiving in himself the reward of the same, with further reward ever at the door. For there is no juster law than the word, “To him that hath shall be given.”

“Why do I never see you on Miss Brown?” asked Wingfold one day of Barbara.

“For a reason I think I ought not to tell you.”

“Then don’t tell me,” returned the parson.

But by a mixture of instinctive induction, and involuntary intuition, he saw into the piece of domestic tyranny, and did what he could to make up for it, by taking her every now and then a long walk or drive with his wife and their little boy. He gave her strong hopeful things to read—and in the search after such was driven to remark how little of the hopeful there is in the English, or in any other language. The song of hope is indeed written in men’s hearts, but few sing it. Yet it is of all songs the sorest-needed of struggling men.

Heart and brain, Wingfold was full of both humour and pathos. In their walks and drives, many a serious subject would give occasion to the former, and many a merry one to the latter. Sometimes he would take a nursery-rime for his theme, and expatiate upon it so, that at one instant Barbara would burst into the gayest laughter, and the next have to restrain her tears. Rarely would Wingfold enter a sick-chamber, especially that of a cottage, with a long face and a sermon in his soul; almost always he walked lightly in, with a cheerful look, and not seldom an odd story on his tongue, well pleased when he could make the sufferer laugh—better pleased sometimes when he had made him sorry. He did not find those that laughed the readiest the hardest to make sorry. He moved his people by infecting their hearts with the feeling in his own.