CHAPTER XVII.
_BARBARA AND OTHERS._
At this point, Barbara's friend came into the room, and they went away
together.
Theodora, so named by her mother because she was born on a Sunday, was a
very different girl from Barbara. Nominally friends, neither understood
the other. Theodora was the best of the family, but that did not suffice
to make her interesting. She was short, stout, rather clumsy, with an
honest, thick-featured face, and entirely without guile. Even when she
saw it, she could not believe it there. She had not much sympathy, but
was very kind. She never hesitated to do what she was sure was right; but
then, except for rules, many of them far from right themselves, she would
have been almost always in doubt. Anything in the shape of a rule, she
received as an angel from heaven. If all the rules she obeyed had been
right, and she had seen the right in them, she would have been making
rapid progress; as it was, her progress was very slow. How Barbara and
she managed to entertain each other, I find it hard to think; but all
forms of innocent humanity must have much in common. A contrast,
nevertheless, the two must have presented to any power able to read them.
Barbara was like a heath of thyme and wild roses and sudden winds;
Theodora like a Dutch garden without its flowers. They never quarrelled.
I suspect they did not come near enough to quarrel.
Barbara left Richard almost bewitched, and considerably perplexed. He had
never seen anything like her. No more had most people that met her. She
seemed of another nature from his, a sort of sylph or salamander, yet, in
simplest human fashion, she had come quite close to him. She had indeed
brought to bear upon him, without knowing it, that humbling and elevating
power which ideal womankind has always had, and will eternally have upon
genuine manhood. There was an airiness about her, yet a reality, a
lightness, yet a force, a readiness, a life, such as he could never have
imagined. She was a revelation unrevealed--a presence lovely but
incredible, suggesting facts and relations which the commonplace in him
said could not exist. The vision was, to use a favourite but pagan
phrase, "too good to be true." Richard's knowledge of girls was small
indeed, but he had now enough to make his first comparison: Alice was
like China, Barbara like Venetian glass. He thought there was something
in Alice if he could only get at it: he feared there was nothing in
Barbara to get at. For one thing, how could she have such parents and
take it so lightly!
There were certainly few things yet in flower in Barbara's garden, but
there was a multitude of precious things on the way to unfold themselves
to any one that might love her enough to give them a true welcome. She
was nearly as far out of Richard's understanding as beyond that of the
good Theodora. The consequence was that he felt himself full beside her
emptiness. He was no coxcomb, neither dreamed of presenting himself for
her admiration; but he pictured the delight of opening the eyes of this
child-woman to the many doors of treasure-houses that stood in her own
wall.
Only those who haunt the slopes of literature, know that marvels lie in
the grass for the hand that will gather them. Multitudes who count
themselves readers know no more of the books they read than the crowds
that visit the Academy exhibitions know of the pictures they gaze upon.
Yet are the realms of literature free as air, freer even than those of
music. The man whose literary judgment and sympathy I prized beyond that
of the world beside, was a clerk in the Bank of England. The man who by
the spell of his words can set me in the heart of soft-stealing
twilight--nay, rather, can set the very heart of the dying day in me--was
a Lancashire weaver. And dainty, bird-moth-like Barbara had begun to
suspect the existence of something hers yet beyond her in books, of an
unknown world which lay at her very door. In that same world the
bookbinder passed much of his time, and it was neither in pride nor in
presumption that he desired to share it with Barbara. It is the home-born
impulse of every true heart to give of its best, to infect with its own
joy; and the thought of giving grandly to a woman, to a lady, might well
fill the soul of a working man with a hitherto unnamed ecstasy. Another
might have compared it to the housing of a strayed angel with frozen
feathers, lost on the wintry wilds of this far-out, border world; but
Richard did not believe in those celestial birds; and had he believed, a
woman would yet have been to him, and rightly, more than any angel. What
he did think of was the huntsman and the little lady in The Flight of the
Duchess.
He began to ponder how to treat her--how to begin to open doors for
her--what door to open first. Should it be of prose or of verse? He must
have more talk with her ere he could tell! He must try her with
something!
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.
