CHAPTER XVIII. MRS. WYLDER.

Mr. Wylder was lord of the manor, and chief land-owner, though his family had never been the most influential, in the parish next that in which lay Mortgrange. He was not much fitted for an English squire. He wished to stand well with his neighbours, but lacked the geniality which is the very body, the outside expression of humanity. Proud of his family, he had the peculiar fault of the Goth—that of arrogance, with its accompanying incapacity for putting oneself in the place of another. Mr. Wylder possessed a huge inability of conceiving the manner in which what he did or said must affect the person to whom he did or said it. So entirely was he thus disqualified for social interchange, that he remained supremely satisfied in his consequent isolation, hardly recognized it, and never doubted himself a perfect gentleman. Had any diffidence enabled him to perceive the reflection of himself in the mirroring minds of those around him, his self-opinion might have been troubled; but when he did begin to discover that the neighbours did not desire his company, he set it down to stupid prejudice against him because he had been so long absent from the country. He did not hunt, and when he went out shooting, which was seldom, he went alone, or with a game-keeper only. In fact he was so careless, that most men who had once shot with him, ever after gave him a wide berth when they saw him with a gun in his hand. On one occasion he shot his wife's twin in the calf of the leg; which, however, made her think no worse of his shooting, for she could never be persuaded he had not done it intentionally.

For a short time before leaving Australasia, the family had spent money in one of its larger cities, and had been a good deal followed; but neither there nor in England did they find that wealth could do everything. A few other qualities, not by any means of the highest order, are required by nearly all social agglomerations, and with some of these Mrs. Wylder was as scantily equipped as her husband with others.

Resenting the indifference of his neighbours, and not caring to remove it, Mr. Wylder betook himself to the exercise of certain constructive faculties, not unfrequently developed in circumstances in which a man has to be his own Jack-of-all-trades: finding a certain old manor-house which he had haunted as a boy, chiefly for the sake of its attendant goose-berries and apples, unoccupied and fallen into decay, he set about restoring it with his own hands. But it had not occurred to him that, although even in England it is not necessary, as they did at Lagado, in building to begin with the roof, in England especially is it necessary in repairing to begin with the roof. While the floors were rotting away, he would be busy panelling the walls, regardless of a drop falling steadily in the middle of the bench at which he was working.

The clergyman of the parish, one Thomas Wingfold, a man who loved his fellow, and would fain give him of the best he had, a man who was a Christian first, which means a man, and then a churchman, had now, for almost three years, often puzzled brain and heart together to find what could be done for these his new parishioners—from the world's point of view the first, yet in reality as insignificant as any he had; and not yet did he know how to get near them. He had not yet seen a glimmer of religion in the man, and had seen more than a glimmer of something else in the woman. Between him and either of them their common humanity had not yet shown a spark. What he had seen of the girl he liked, but he had not seen much.

It was a fine frosty day in February, about twelve o'clock, when Mr. Wingfold walked up the avenue of Scotch firs to call on Mrs. Wylder. He was dressed like any country gentleman in a tweed suit, carried a rather strong stick, and wore a soft felt hat, looking altogether more of a squire than a clergyman—for which his parishioners mostly liked him the better. Pious people in general seem to regard religion as a necessary accompaniment of life; to Wingfold it was life itself; with him religion must be all, or could be nothing. He did not accept the good news of God; he strained it to his heart, and was jubilant over it. He was a rather square-looking man, with projecting brows, and a grizzled beard. The upper part of his face would look dark while a smile was hovering about his mouth; at another time his mouth would look solemn, almost severe, while a radiance, as from some white cloud nobody could see, illuminated his forehead. He generally walked with his eyes on the ground, but would every now and then straighten his back, and gaze away to the horizon, as if looking for the far-off sails of help. He was noted among his farmers for his common sense, as they called it, and among the gentry for a certain frankness of speech, which most of them liked.

He rang the door-bell of the Hall, and asked if Mrs. Wylder was at home. The man hesitated, looked in the clergyman's face, and smiling oddly, answered, "Yes, sir."

"Only you don't think she will care to see me!"

"Well, you know, sir,—"

"I do. Go up, and announce me."

The man led the way, and Mr. Wingfold followed. He opened the door of a room on the first floor, and announced him. Mr. Wingfold entered immediately, that there might be no time for words with the man and a message of refusal.

Discouragement encountered him on the threshold. The lady sat by a blazing fire, with her back to a window through which the frosty sun of February was sending lovely prophecies of the summer. She was in a gorgeous dressing-gown, her plentiful black hair twisted carelessly, but with a show of defiance, round her head. She was almost a young woman still, with a hardness of expression that belonged neither to youth nor age. She sat sideways to the door, so that without turning her head she must have seen the parson enter, but she did not move a visible hair's-breadth. Her feet, in silk stockings and shabby slippers, continued perched on the fender. She made no sign of greeting when the parson came in front of her, but a scowl dark as night settled on her low forehead and black eyebrows, and her face shortened and spread out. Wingfold approached her with the air of a man who knew himself unwelcome but did not much mind—for he had not to care about himself.

"Good morning, Mrs. Wylder!" he said. "What a lovely morning it is!"

"Is it? I know nothing about it. You have a brutal climate!"

He knew she regarded him as the objectionable agent of a more objectionable Heaven.

"You would not dislike it so much if you met it out of doors. A walk on a day like this, now,—"

"Pray who authorized you to come and offer me advice I Have I concealed from you, Mr. Wingfold, that your presence gives me no pleasure?"

"You certainly have not! You have been quite honest with me. I did not come in the hope of pleasing you—though I wish I could."

"Then perhaps you will explain why you are here!"

"There are visits that must be made, even with the certainty of giving annoyance!" answered Wingfold, rather cheerfully.

"That means you consider yourself justified in forcing your way into my room, before I am dressed, with the simple intention of making yourself disagreeable!"

"If I were here on my own business, you might well blame me! But what would you say to one of your men who told you he dared not go your message for fear of the lightning?"

"I would tell him he was a coward, and to go about his business."

"That, then, is what I don't want to be told!"

"And for fear of being told it, you dare me!"

"Well—you may put it so;—yes."

"I don't like you the worse for your courage. There's more than one man would face half a dozen bush-rangers rather than a woman I know!"

"I believe it. But it makes no extravagant demand on my courage. I am not afraid of you. I owe you nothing—except any service worth doing for you!"

"Let that blind down: the sun's putting the fire out."

"It's a pity to put the sun out in such a brutal climate. He does the fire no harm."

"Don't tell me!"

"Science says he does not."

"He puts the fire out, I tell you!"

"I do not think so."

"I've seen it with my own eyes. God knows which is the greater humbug—Science or Religion!—Are you going to pull that blind down?" Wingfold lowered the blind.

"Now look here!" said Mrs. Wylder. "You're not afraid of me, and I'm not afraid of you!—It's a low trade, is yours."

"What is my trade?"

"What is your trade?—Why, to talk goody! and read goody! and pray goody! and be goody, goody!—Ugh!"

"I'm not doing much of that sort at this moment, any way!" rejoined Wingfold with a laugh.

"You know this is not the place for it!"

"Would you mind telling me which is the place to read a French novel in?"

"Church: there!"

"What would you do if I were to insist on reading a chapter of the Bible here?"

"Look!" she answered, and rising, snatched a saloon-pistol from the chimney-piece, and took deliberate aim at him.

Wingfold looked straight down the throat of the thick barrel, and did not budge.

"—I would shoot you with that," she went on, holding the weapon as I have said. "It would kill you, for I can shoot, and should hit you in the eye, not on the head. I shouldn't mind being hanged for it. Nothing matters now!"

She flung the heavy weapon from her, gave a great cry, not like an hysterical woman, but an enraged animal, stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth, pulled it out again, and began tearing at it with her teeth. The pistol fell in the middle of the room. Wingfold went and picked it up.

"I should deserve it if I did," he said quietly, as he laid the pistol on the table. "—But you don't fight fair, Mrs. Wylder; for you know I can't take a pistol with me into the pulpit and shoot you. It is cowardly of you to take advantage of that."

"Well! I like the assurance of you! Do I read so as to annoy any one?"

"Yes, you do. You daren't read aloud, because you would be put out of the church if you did; but you annoy as many of the congregation as can see you, and you annoy me. Why should you behave in that house as if it were your own, and yet shoot me if I behaved so in yours? Is it fair? Is it polite? Is it acting like a lady?"

"It is my house—at least it is my pew, and I will do in it what I please.—Look here, Mr. Wingfold: I don't want to lose my temper with you, but I tell you that pew is mine, as much as the chair you're not ashamed to sit upon at this moment! And let me tell you, after the way I've been treated, my behaviour don't splash much. When he's brought a woman to my pass, I don't see God Almighty can complain of her manners!"

"Well, thinking of him as you do, I don't wonder you are rude!"

"What! You won't curry favour with him?—You hold by fair play? Come now! I call that downright pluck!"

"I fear you mistake me a little."

"Of course I do! I might have known that! When you think a parson begins to speak like a man, you may be sure you mistake him!"

"You wouldn't behave to a friend of your own according to what another person thought of him, would you?"

"No, by Jove, I wouldn't!"

"Then you won't expect me to do so!"

"I should think not! Of course you stick by the church!"

"Never mind the church. She's not my mistress, though I am her servant. God is my master, and I tell you he is as good and fair as goodness and fairness can be goodness and fairness!"

"What! Will you drive me mad! I wish he would serve you as he's done me—then we should hear another tune—rather! You call it good—you call it fair, to take from a poor creature he made himself, the one only thing she cared for?"

"Which was the cause of a strife that made of a family in which he wanted to live, a very hell upon earth!"

"You dare!" she cried, starting to her feet.

Wingfold did not move.

"Mrs. Wylder," he said, "dare is a word that needn't be used again between you and me. If you dare tell God that he is a devil, I may well dare tell you that you know nothing about him, and that I do!"

"Say on your honour, then, if he had treated you as he has done me—taken from you the light of your eyes, would you count it fair? Speak like the man you are."

"I know I should."

"I don't believe you. And I won't worship him."

"Why, who wants you to worship him? You must be a very different person before he will care much for your worship! You can't worship him while you think him what you do. He is something quite different. You don't know him to love, and you don't know him to worship."

"Why, bless my soul! ain't it your business—ain't you always making people say their prayers?"

"It is my business to help my brothers and sisters to know God, and worship him in spirit and in truth—because he is altogether and perfectly true and loving and fair. Do you think he would have you worship a being such as you take him to be. If your son is in good company in the other world, he must be greatly troubled at the way you treat God—at your unfairness to him. But your bad example may, for anything I know, have sent him where he has not yet begun to learn anything!"

"God have mercy!—will the man tell me to my face that my boy is in hell?"

"What would you have? Would you have him with the being you think so unjust that you hate him all the week, and openly insult him on Sunday?"

"You are a bad man, a hard-hearted brute, a devil, to say such things about my blessed boy! Oh my God! to think that the very day he was taken ill, I struck him! Why did he let me do it? To think that that very day he killed him, when he ought to have killed me!—killed him that I might never be able to tell him I was sorry!"

"If he had not taken him then, would you ever have been sorry you struck him!"

She burst into outcry and weeping, mingled with such imprecation, that Wingfold thought it one of those cases of possession in which nothing but prayer is of use. But the soul and the demon were so united, so entirely of one mind, that there was no room for prayer to get between them. He sat quiet, lifted up his heart, and waited. By and by there came a lull, and the redeemable woman appeared, emerging from the smoke of the fury.

"Oh my Harry! my Harry!" she cried. "To take him from my very bosom! He will never love me again! God shall know what I think of it! No mother could but hate him if he served her so!"

"Apparently you don't want the boy back in your bosom again!"

"None of your fooling of me now!" she answered, drawing herself up, and drying her eyes. "I can stand a good deal, but I won't stand that! What's gone is gone! He's dead, and the dead lie in no bosom but that of the grave! They go, and return never more!"

"But you will die too!"

"What do you mean by that? You will be talking! As if I didn't know I'd got to die, one day or another! What's that to me and Harry!"

"Then you think we're all going to cease and go out, like the clouds that are carried away and broken up by the wind?"

"I know nothing about it, and I don't care. Nothing's anything to me but Harry, and I shall never see my Harry again!—Heaven! Bah! What's heaven without Harry!"

"Nothing, of course! But don't you ever think of seeing him again?"

"What's the use! It's all a mockery! Where's the good of meeting when we shan't be human beings any more? If we're nothing but ghosts—if he's never to know me—if I'm never to feel him in my arms—ugh! it's all humbug! If he ever meant to give me back my Harry, why did he take him from me? If he didn't mean me to rage at losing him, why did he give him to me?"

"He gave you his brother at the same time, and you refused to love him: what if he took the one away until you should have learned to love the other?"

"I can't love him; I won't love him! He has his father to love him! He don't want my love! I haven't got it to give him! Harry took it with him! I hate Peter!—What are you doing there—laughing in your sleeve? Did you never see a woman cry?"

"I've seen many a woman cry, but never without my heart crying with her. You come to my church, and behave so badly I can scarce keep from crying for you. It half choked me last Sunday, to see you lying there with that horrid book in your hand, and the words of Christ in your ears!"

"I didn't heed them. It wasn't a horrid book!"

"It was a horrid book. You left it behind you, and I took it with me. I laid it on my study-table, and went out again. When I came home to dinner, my wife brought it to me and said, 'Oh, Tom, how can you read such books?' 'My dear,' I answered, 'I don't know what is in the book; I haven't read a word of it.'"

"And then you told her where you found it?"

"I did not."

"What did you do with it?"

"I said to her, 'If it's a bad book, here goes!' and threw it in the fire."

"Then I'm not to know the end of the story! But I can send to London for another copy! I'm much obliged to you, Mr. Wingfold, for destroying my property!—But you didn't tell her where you found it?"

"I did not. She never asked me."

Mrs. Wylder was silent. She seemed a little ashamed, perhaps a little softened. Wingfold bade her good-morning. She did not answer him.