Her Daughter
Boy Woodburn had been born to the apparently incongruous couple some
years after their marriage.
From the very beginning she had always been Boy. Mrs. Haggard, who
didn't quite approve of the name--and there were many things Mrs.
Haggard didn't quite approve of--once inquired the origin of it.
"I think it came," answered Mrs. Woodburn.
And certainly nobody but the vicar's wife ever thought or spoke of the
girl as Joyce. She grew up in Mrs. Haggard's judgment quite uneducated.
That lady, a good but somewhat officious creature, was genuinely
distressed and made many protests.
The protests were invariably met by Mrs. Woodburn imperturbably as
always.
"It's how my father was bred," she replied in that plain manner of hers,
so plain indeed that conventional people sometimes complained of it as
rude. "That's good enough for me."
Mrs. Haggard carried her complaint to her husband, the vicar.
"There was once a man called Wordsworth, I believe," was all the answer
of that enigmatic creature.
"You're much of a pair, you and Mrs. Woodburn," snapped his wife as she
left the room.
"My dear, you flatter me," replied the quiet vicar.
On the face of it, indeed, Mrs. Haggard had some ground for her anxiety
about the girl.
Boy from the beginning was bred in the stables, lived in them, loved
them.
At four she began to ride astride and had never known a side-saddle or
worn a habit all her life. She took to the pigskin as a duck to water;
and at seven, Monkey Brand, then in his riding prime, gave her up.
"She knows more'n me," he said, half in sorrow, half in pride, as his
erstwhile pupil popped her pony over a Sussex heave-gate.
"Got wings, she have."
"Look-a-there!"
But the girl did not desert her first master. She would sit on a table
in the saddle-room, swinging her legs, and shaking her fair locks as she
listened bright-eyed while Monkey, busy on leather with soap and sponge,
told again the familiar story of Cannibal's National.
It was on her ninth birthday that, at the conclusion of the oft-told
tale, she put a solemn question:
"Monkey Brand!"
"Yes, Minie."
"Do-you-think-I-could-win-with-the National?"
"No sayin' but you might, Min."
The child's eyes became steel. She set her lips, and nodded her flaxen
head with fierce determination.
She never recurred to the matter, or mentioned it to others. But from
that time forth to ride the National winner became her secret ambition,
dwelt upon by day, dreamed over by night, her constant companion in the
saddle, nursed secretly in the heart of her heart, and growing always as
she grew.
Certainly she was a Centaur if ever child was.
To the girl indeed her pony was like a dog. She groomed him, fed him,
took him to be shod, and scampered over the wide-strewn Downs on him,
sometimes bare-backed, sometimes on a numnah, hopping on and off him
light as a bird and active as a kitten.
Mrs. Woodburn let the child go largely her own way.
"Plenty of liberty to enjoy themselves----" that was the principle she
had found successful in the stockyard and the gardens, and she tried it
on Boy without a tremor.
Old Joe Longstaffe on his death-bed confirmed the faith of his daughter
in this matter of the education or non-education of the child.
"Don't meddle," he had said, "God'll grow in her--if you'll let him."
Patience Woodburn never forgot her father's words and never had cause to
regret that she had followed them.
The girl, wayward though she might be at times, never gave her mother a
moment's real anxiety. She was straight as a dart, strong as a young
hawk, fearless as a lion, and free as the wind. Her simplicity, her
purity and strength made people afraid of her. In a crowd they always
made way for her: for she was resolute with the almost ruthless
resolution of one whose purpose is sure and conscience clean.
"You feel," Mr. Haggard once said, "that--she's clear." He waved
vaguely.
"Pity she's a little heathen," said Mrs. Haggard acridly.
"She doesn't know her catechism," answered the mild vicar in his
exasperatingly mild way. "Is she any the worse?"
"Churchman!" snorted his outraged spouse.
Mrs. Haggard's indictment was unfounded. The girl was fierce and swift,
but she was not a heathen. Mrs. Woodburn had seen to that. Sometimes she
used to take the child to the Children's Services in the little old
church on the edge of the Paddock Close. The girl enjoyed the services,
and she loved Mr. Haggard; but when, during her grand-dad's lifetime,
her mother gave the child her choice between the church and the little
God-First chapel on the way to Lewes, she always chose the latter.
It may be that her choice was decided by the fact that she drove to the
chapel and walked to the church; it may be that, dearly as she loved the
vicar, she loved her grand-dad more; or it may be that the simplicity of
the chapel, the austerity of the service, and the character of the
congregation, all of a kind, close to earth, humble of heart, and russet
in hue, attending there for no other reason than because they loved it,
appealed to something profound and ineradicable in the spirit of this
child bred amongst the austere and simple hills to which she knew
herself so close.
Old Mat was fond of saying that the girl's mother could do what she
liked with her, and nobody else could do anything at all.
"I don't try," he would add, "She puts the terror on to me, that gal
do."
And the old man was right.
Different as they were, there was a deep and mysterious sympathy between
mother and daughter. And on that sympathy the mother's power was based.
Only once was her authority, based as it was upon the spirit, subject to
breaking strain.
When the girl was fourteen, Mrs. Woodburn decided to send her to the
High School at Lewes. Old Mat shook his head; Mrs. Haggard was
delighted; the girl herself went about with pursed lips and frozen air.
The vicar, meeting her in the village, stopped her.
"What d'you think about it, Boy?" he asked in his grave, kind way.
"I shall go," blurted the girl. "But I shall win all the same."
"Win what?" asked the vicar.
"_That_," said Boy, and flashed on her way.
When the day of parting came, word was sent round to the stables that
nobody was to be in them at twelve o'clock. At that hour a slight cold
figure crossed the yard swiftly, and entered the stables. The key was
turned in the door. There was no sound from within, except the movement
of the horses, to whom the girl was bidding good-bye.
Half an hour later the door was opened, and she came out, cold and
frosty as she had entered.
Monkey Brand, standing in the door of the saddle-room, keeping guard
over the stable-lads lest they should peep and pry, saw her come.
"She look very grim," he afterward reported to Old Mat.
"Keeps a stiff lip for a little 'un," whispered a lad peeping from
behind the jockey's shoulder.
Monkey Brand rounded on him.
"If you'd 'alf her 'eart," he said, "you might be mistook for a man."
For three weeks thereafter Putnam's knew the girl no more; and it seemed
that the soul had died out of the place. Monkey Brand moped, and swore
the horses moped, too.
"When I goes round my 'orses in the mornin' they look at me like so many
bull-oxes askin' to be slaughtered," he said. "Never see sich a sight.
Never!"
Old Mat for once was glum. His eye lost its twinkle, and his walk its
famous lilt. Mr. Haggard was genuinely sorry for the old man.
"Miss her, Mr. Woodburn?" he asked, stopping the trainer in the village
street.
"Miss her!" cried the other. "Mr. Haggard, there's nothing about Hell
you can teach _me_. I knows it all." He waved a significant hand and
walked away, his heart in his boots.
Of all the party at Putnam's, Mrs. Woodburn only seemed undisturbed.
Unmoved by the gloom of those about her, glum looks, short answers, and
the atmosphere of a November fog, she went about her business as before.
Boy's history during those weeks has never been written, and never will
be. What she did, said, thought, and suffered during that time--and what
others did, said, thought, and suffered because of her--none but the
Recording Angel knows. The girl herself never referred to the point; but
were reference made to it, she winced like a foal at the touch of the
branding-iron.
The episode happily lasted but three weeks.
At the end of that time, on a Saturday morning, one of the lads had
ridden the Fly-away filly over to Lewes. There in the High Street the
girl swooped on him.
"Get off!" she ordered.
The lad, who feared Miss Boy as he did the devil, obeyed with alacrity.
"Put me up!" Boy ordered.
Again the lad obeyed, and the next thing he was aware of was the swish
of the filly's thoroughbred tail as she disappeared round the corner of
the street.
An hour later the girl clattered into the yard at Putnam's, the filly in
a foam.
Monkey Brand, a chamois leather in his hand, came running out.
"Miss Boy!" he cried.
There was an extraordinary air of suppressed excitement about the girl.
She was white-hot and sparkling, yet cold. Indeed, she gave the
impression of a sea of emotions battling beneath a floor of ice.
"I've got out," she said.
Panting, but fearless eyed, she went in to face her mother.
Mrs. Woodburn did not seem surprised.
She met her daughter's resistance with disarming quiet.
"Well, Boy," she said, kissing the truant.
"I'm not going back," panted the girl. Her spirit fluttered furiously as
that of an escaped bird who fears recapture.
"I'm not going to send you back, my dear," replied the mother.
The girl put her arms about her mother's neck in a moment of rare
impulse.
"Oh, mother!" she sighed.
She did not cry: Boy Woodburn was never known to cry. She did not faint.
She very rarely fainted. But she trembled through and through.
Mrs. Woodburn paid the necessary fees. The schoolmistress didn't ask to
have the girl back. She admitted that she could make nothing of her.
"Stuck her toes in," said Old Mat. "And I don't blame her. Can't see Boy
walkin' out two be two, and hand in hand." He shook his head. "Mustn't
put a blood filly in the cart, Mar," he said. "She'll only kick the
caboodlum to pieces."
Mrs. Woodburn made one more effort to educate her daughter on
conventional lines. She introduced a governess to Putnam's. But after
the girl had taken her mistress for a ride, the poor woman came to Mrs.
Woodburn in tears and asked to leave.
"I can't teach her the irregular verbs on horseback," she said. "And she
won't learn any other way. Directly I begin on them, she starts to
gallop."
Mrs. Woodburn accepted the governess's notice, and tried nothing
further.
"She must go her own way now," she said to Mat.
"It's the right way, Mar," replied the old man comfortably.
"I hope so," answered his wife.
"She can read, and she can write, and she can 'rithmetik,'" continued
the other. "What more d'you want with this 'ere education?" He went out,
shaking his head. "I sha'n't wep no tear," he said. "That I sha'n't,
even if she don't get round them wriggle-regular French worms Mamsel
talks of. Roast beef o' old England for me."
Mrs. Woodburn announced her decision to her daughter.
"Thank you, mother," said the girl quietly, and added: "It's no
good--not for me."
Mrs. Woodburn eyed her daughter.
"You're a good maid, Boy," she said. "That's the main."
A month later the girl asked her mother if she might help with the lads'
Bible Class.
Mrs. Woodburn consented.
A year later, when the girl was sixteen, Mrs. Woodburn asked her
daughter if she would take the class alone.
The girl thought it over for a month.
Then she said yes.
In the interval she had passed through a spiritual crisis and made a
great renunciation.
She had resolved to put aside the dream that had dominated her inner
life for seven years.