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.