CHAPTER XXIX. ALICE AND BARBARA.

It was weeks before Alice was able to leave her bed: she had been utterly exhausted.

On a lovely summer morning she woke to a sense of returning health. She had been lying like a waste shore, at low spring-tide, covered with dry seaweeds, withered jelly-fishes, and a multitudinous life that gasped for the ocean: at last, at last, the cool, washing throb of the great sea of bliss, whose fountain is the heart of God, had stolen upon her consciousness, and she knew that she lived. She lay in a neat little curtained bed, in a room with a sloping roof on both sides, covered, not with tiles or slates, but with warm thatch, thick and sound. Ivy was creeping through the chinks of the ill-fitting window-frame; but through the little dormer window itself the sun shone freely, and made shadows of shivering ivy-leaves upon the deal floor. It was a very humble room, and Alice had been used to much better furniture—but neither to room nor furniture so clean. There was a wholesomeness and purity everywhere about her, very welcome to the lady-eyes with which Alice was born; for it is God that makes ladies, not stupid society and its mawkish distinctions. One brief moment she felt as if she had gained the haven of her rest, for she lay at peace, and nothing gnawed. But suddenly a pang shot through her heart, and she knew that some harassing thought was at hand: pain was her portion, and had but to define itself to grow sharp. She rose on her elbow to receive the enemy. He came; she fell back with a fainting heart and a writhing will. She had left love and misery behind her to seek help, and she had not found it! she had but lost sight of those for whom she sought the help! She could not tell how long it was since she had seen her mother and Arthur: she lay covered with kindness by people she had never before seen; and how they were faring, she could but conjecture, and conjecture had in it no comfort!

Alice had little education beyond what life had given her; but life is the truest of all teachers, however little the results of her teaching may be valued by school-enthusiasts. She did not put the letter H in its place except occasionally, but she knew how to send a selfish thought back to its place. She did not know one creed from another, but she loved what she saw to be good. She knew nothing of the Norman conquest, but she knew much of self-conquest. She could make her breakfast off dry bread, that her mother might have hot coffee and the best of butter. She wore very shabby frocks, but she would not put bad work into the seams of a rich lady's dress. She stooped as she walked, and there was a lack of accord between her big beautiful eyes and the way she put her feet down; but it was the same thing that made her eyes so large, and her feet so heavy; and if she could not trip lightly along the street, she could lay very tender hands on her mother's head when it ached with drinking. She had suffered much at the hands of great ladies, yet she had but to see Barbara to love her.

As she lay with her heart warming in that sunshine in which every heart must one day flash like the truest of diamonds, she heard the sound of a horse's hoofs on the road. Her angel came to Alice with no flapping of great wings, or lighting of soft-poised heavenly feet on wooden floor, but with the sounds of ringing iron shoes and snorting breath, to be followed by a girl's feet on the stair, whose herald was the smell, now of rosiest roses, now of whitest lilies, in the chamber of her sad sister. Well might Alice have sung, "How beautiful are the feet!" At the music of those mounting feet, death and fear slunk from the room, and Alice knew there was salvation in the world. What evil can there be for which there is no help in another honest human soul! What sorrow is there from which a man may not be some covert, some shadow! Alas for the true soul which cannot itself save, when it has no notion where help is to be found!

"Well, how are you to-day, little one?" said Barbara, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

Alice was older and taller than Barbara, but Barbara never thought about height or age: strong herself, she took the maternal relation to all weakness.

"Ever so much better, miss!" answered Alice.

"Now, none of that!" returned the little lady, "or I walk out of the room! My name is Barbara, and we are friends—except you think it cheeky of me to call you Alice!"

Alice stretched out her thin arms, folded them gently around Barbara, and burst into weeping, which was not all bitter.

"Will you let me tell you everything?" she cried.

"What am I here for?" returned Barbara, deep in her embrace. "Only don't think I'm asking you to tell me anything. Tell me whatever you like—whatever will help me to know you—not a thing more."

Alice lay silent for an instant, then said—

"I wish you would ask me some question! I don't know how to begin!"

Without a moment's hesitation, Barbara said in response—

"What do you do all day in London?"

"Sew, sew, sit and sew, from morning to night," answered Alice. "No sooner one thing out of your hands, than another in them, so that you never feel, for all you do, that you've done anything! The world is just as greedy of your work as before. I sometimes wish," she went on, with a laugh that had a touch of real merriment in it, "that ladies were made with hair like a cat, I am so tired of the everlasting bodice and skirt!—Only what would become of us then! It would only be more hunger for less weariness!—It's a downright dreary life, miss!"

"Have a care!" said Barbara solemnly, and Alice laughed.

"You see," she said, and paused a moment as if trying to say Barbara, "I'm used to think of ladies as if they were a different creation from us, and it seems rude to call you—Barbara!"

She spoke the name with such a lingering sweetness as made its owner thrill with a new pleasure.

"It seems," she went on, "like presuming to—to—to stroke an angel's feathers!"

"And much I'd give for the angel," cried Barbara, "that wouldn't like having his feathers stroked by a girl like you! He might fly for me, and go—where he'd have them singed!"

"Then I will call you Barbara; and I will answer any question you like to put to me!"

"And your mother, I daresay, is rather trying when you come home?" said Barbara, resuming her examination, and speaking from experience. "Mothers are—a good deal!"

"Well, you see, miss—Barbara, my mother wasn't used to a hard life like us, and Artie—that's my brother—and I have to do our best to keep her from feeling it; but we don't succeed very well—not as we should like to, that is. Neither of us gets much for our day's work, and we can't do for her as we would. Poor mamma likes to have things nice; and now that the money she used to have is gone—I don't know how it went: she had it in some bank, and somebody speculated with it, I suppose!—anyhow, it's gone, and the thing can't be done. Artie grows thinner and thinner, and it's no use! Oh, miss, I know I shall lose him! and when I think of it, the whole world seems to die and leave me in a brick-field!"

She wept a moment, very quietly, but very bitterly.

"I know he does his very best," she resumed, "but she won't see it! She thinks he might do more for her! and I'm sure he's dying!"

"Send him to me," said Barbara; "I'll make him well for you."

"I wish I could, miss—I mean Barbara!—Oh, ain't there a lot of nice things that can't ever be done!"

"Does your mother do nothing to help?"

"She don't know how; she 'ain't learned anything like us. She was brought up a lady. I remember her saying once she ought to 'a' been a real lady, a lady they say my lady to!"

"Indeed! How was it then that she is not?"

"I don't know. There are things we don't dare ask mamma about. If she had been proud of them, she would have told us without asking."

"What was your father, Alice?"

The girl hesitated.

"He was a baronet, Barbara.—But perhaps you would rather I said miss again!"

"Don't be foolish, child!" Barbara returned peremptorily.

"I suppose my mother meant that he promised to marry her, but never did. They say gentlemen think no harm of making such promises—without even meaning to keep them!—I don't know!—I've got no time to think about such things,—only—"

"Only you're forced!" supplemented Barbara. "I've been forced to think about them too—just once. They're not nice to think about! but so long as there's snakes, it's better to know the sort of grass they lie in!—Did he take your mother's money and spend it?"

"Oh, no, not that! He was a gentleman, a baronet, you know, and they don't do such things!"

"Don't they!" said Barbara. "I don't know what things gentlemen don't do!—But what happened to the money? There may be some way of getting it back!"

"There's no hope of that! I'll tell you how I think it was: my father didn't care to marry my mother, for he wanted a great lady; so he said good-bye to her, and she didn't mind, for he was a selfish man, she said. So she took the money, for of course she had to bring us up, and couldn't do it without—and what they call invested it. That means, you know, that somebody took charge of it. So it's all gone, and she gets no interest on it, and the shops won't trust us a ha'penny more. We can't always pay down for the kind of thing she likes, and must take what we can pay for, or go without; and she thinks we might do better for her if we would, and we don't know how. The other day—I don't like to tell it of her, even to you, Barbara, but I'm afraid she had been taking too much, for she went to Mrs. Harman and took me away, and said I could get much better wages, and she didn't give me half what my work was worth. I cried, for I couldn't help it, I was that weak and broken-like, for I had had no breakfast that morning—at least not to speak of, and I got up to go, for I couldn't say a word, and wanted my mother out of the place. But Mrs. Harman—she is a kind woman!—she interfered, and said my mother had no right to take me away, and I must finish my month. So I sat down again, and my mother was forced to go. But when she was gone, Mrs. Harman said to me, 'The best thing after all,' says she, 'that you can do, Ally, is to let your mother have her way. You just stop at home till she gets you a place where they'll pay you better than I do! She'll find out the sooner that there isn't a better place to be had, for it's a slack time now, and everybody has too many hands! When her pride's come down a bit, you come and see whether I'm able to take you on again.' Now wasn't that good of her?"

"M-m-m!" said Barbara. "It was a slack time!—So you went home to your mother?"

"Yes—and it was just as Mrs. Harman said: there wasn't a stitch wanted! I went from place to place, asking—I nearly killed myself walking about: walking's harder for one not used to it than sitting ever so long! So I went back to Mrs. Harman, and told her. She said she couldn't have me just then, but she'd keep her eye on me. I went home nearly out of my mind. Artie was growing worse and worse, and I had nothing to do. It's a mercy it was warm weather; for when you haven't much to eat, the cold is worse than the heat. Then in summer you can walk on the shady side, but in winter there ain't no sunny side. At last, one night as I lay awake, I made up my mind I would go and see whether my father was as hard-hearted as people said. Perhaps he would help us over a week or two; and if I hadn't got work by that time, we should at least be abler to bear the hunger! So the next day, without a word to mother or Artie, I set out and came down here."

"And you didn't see sir Wilton?"

"La, miss! who told you? Did I let out the name?"

"No, you didn't; but, though there are a good many baronets, they don't exactly crowd a neighbourhood! What did he say to you?"

"I 'ain't seen him yet, miss,—Barbara, I mean! I went up to the lodge, and the woman looked me all over, curious like, from head to foot; and then she said sir Wilton wasn't at home, nor likely to be."

"What a lie!" exclaimed Barbara.

"You know him then, Barbara?"

"Yes; but never mind. I must ask all my questions first, and then it will be your turn. What did you do next?"

"I went away, but I don't know what I did. How I came to be sitting on that stone inside that gate, I can't tell. I think I must have gone searching for a place to die in. Then Richard came. I tried hard to keep him from knowing me, but I couldn't."

"You knew that Richard was there?"

"Where, miss?"

"At the baronet's place—Mortgrange."

"Lord, miss! Then they've acknowledged him!"

"I don't know what you mean by that. He's there mending their books."

"Then I oughtn't to have spoken. But it don't matter—to you, Barbara! No; I knew nothing about him being there, or anywhere else, for I'd lost sight of him. It was a mere chance he found me. I didn't know him till he spoke to me. I heard his step, but I didn't look up. When I saw who it was, I tried to make him leave me—indeed I did, but he would take me! He carried me all the way to the cottage where you found me."

"Why didn't you want him to know you? What have you against him?"

"Not a thing, miss! He would be a brother to me if I would let him. It's a strange story, and I'm not quite sure if I ought to tell it."

"Are you bound in any way not to tell it?"

"No. She didn't tell me about it."

"You mean your mother?"

"No; I mean his mother."

"I am getting bewildered!" said Barbara.

"No wonder, miss! You'll be more bewildered yet when I tell you all!" She was silent. Barbara saw she was feeling faint.

"What a brute I am to make you talk!" she cried, and ran to fetch her a cup of milk, which she made her drink slowly.

"I must tell you everything!" said Alice, after lying a moment or two silent.

"You shall to-morrow," said Barbara.

"No; I must now, please! I must tell you about Richard!"

"Have you known him a long time?"

"I call him Richard," said Alice, "because my brother does. They were at school together. But it is only of late—not a year ago, that I began to know him. He came to see Arthur once, and then I went with Arthur to see him and his people. But his mother behaved very strangely to me, and asked me a great many questions that I thought she had no business to ask me. Before that, I had noticed that she kept looking from Arthur to Richard, and from Richard to Arthur, in the oddest way; I couldn't make it out. Then she asked me to go to her bedroom with her, and there she told me. She was very rough to me, I thought, but I must say the tears were in her own eyes! She said she could not have Richard keeping company with us, for she knew what my mother was, and who my father was, and we were not respectable people, and it would never do. If she heard of Richard going to our house once again, she would have to do something we shouldn't like. Then she cried quite, and said she was sorry to hurt me, for I seemed a good girl, and it wasn't my fault, but she couldn't help it; the thing would be a mischief. And there she stopped as if she had said too much already. You may be sure I thought myself ill-used, and Arthur worse; for we both liked Richard, though my mother didn't think him at all our equal, or fit to be a companion to Arthur; for Arthur was a clerk, while Richard worked with his hands. Arthur said he worked with his hands too, and turned out far poorer work than Richard—stupid figures instead of beautiful books; and I said I worked with my needle quite as hard as Richard with his tools; but it had no effect on my mother: her ways of looking at things are not the same as ours, because she was born a lady. Why don't a lady have ladies, Barbara?"

"Never you mind, Alice! Every good woman will be a lady one day—I am sure of that! It was cruel to treat you so! How anybody belonging to Richard could do it, I can't think; he's so gentle and good himself!"

"He's the kindest and best of—of men, and I love him," said Alice earnestly. "But I must tell you, Barbara—I must make you understand that I have a right to love him. When I told poor Arthur, as we went home that night, that he wasn't to see any more of Richard, he could not help crying. I saw it, though he tried to hide it. Of course I didn't let him know I saw him cry. Men are ashamed of crying. I ain't a bit. For Richard was the only schoolfellow ever was a friend to Artie. He once fought a big fellow that used to torment him! By the time we got home, I was boiling over with rage, and told mamma all about it. Angry as I was, her anger frightened mine out of me. 'The insolent woman!' she cried. 'But I'll soon have a rod in pickle for her! I'll have my revenge of her—that you shall soon see! My children weren't good enough for her tradesman-fellow, weren't they! She said that, did she? She ain't the only one has got eyes in her head! Didn't you see me look at him as sharp as she did at you? If ever face told tale without meaning to tell it, that's the face of the young man you call Richard! He's a Lestrange, as sure's there's a God in heaven! He's got the mark as plain as sir Wilton himself!—not a feature the same, I grant, but Lestrange is writ in every one of them! I'll take my oath who was his father!—And there she goes as mim and as prim—!' 'No, mamma,' I said, 'that she does not. She looks as fierce as a lioness!' I said. 'What's her name?' asked my mother. 'Tuke,' I answered. 'Was there ever such a name!' she cried. 'It's fitter for a dog than a human being! But it's good enough for her anyway. What was her maiden name? Who was she? There's the point!' 'But if what you suspect be true, mamma,' I said, 'then she had good reason for wishing us parted!' 'She ought to have come to me about it!' said my mother. 'She ought to have left it to me to say what should be done! I'm not married to a dirty tradesman!' I'm not telling you exactly what she said, miss, because when she loses her temper, poor mamma don't always speak quite like a lady, though of course she is one, all the same! I said no more, but I thought how kindly Richard always looked at me, and my heart grew big inside me to think that Artie and I had him for our own brother. Nobody could touch that! He had notions I didn't like—for, do you know, Barbara, he believes we just go out like a candle that can never again be lighted any more. He thinks there's no life after this one! He can't have loved anybody much, I fear, to be able to think that! You don't agree with him, I'm certain, miss! But I thought, if he was my brother, I might be able to help change his mind about it. I thought I would be so good to him that he wouldn't like me to die for ever and ever, and would come to see things differently. I had no friend, not one, you see, miss—Barbara, I mean—except Arthur, and he never has much to say about anything, though he's as true as steel; and I thought it would be bliss to have a man-friend—I mean a good man for a real friend, and I knew Richard would be that, though he was a brother! Most brothers are not friends to poor girls. I know three whose brothers get all they can out of them, and don't care how they have to slave for it, and then spend it on treats to other girls! But I was sure Richard was good, though he wasn't religious! So I said to mamma that, now we knew all about it, there could be no reason why we shouldn't see as much of each other as ever we liked, seeing Richard was our brother. But she paid no heed to me; she sat thinking and thinking; and I read in her face that she was not in a brown study, but trying to get at something. It was many minutes before she spoke, but she did at last, and what she told us is my secret, Barbara! But I'm not bound to keep it from you, for I know you would not hurt Richard, and you have a right to know whatever I know, for you found my life and wrapped it up in love and gave it back to me, dear Barbara!—It was not a pretty story for a mother to tell her children—and it's a sore grief not to be able to think everything that's good of your mother; but it's all past now;—and it ain't our fault—is it, Barbara?"

"Your fault!" cried Barbara. "What do you mean?"

"People treat us as if it were."

"Never you mind. You've got a Father in heaven to see to that!"

"Thank you, Barbara! You make me so happy! Now I can tell you all!—'I've got it!' cried my mother. 'Bless my soul, what an ass I was not to see through it at once! Now you just listen to me: sir Wilton was married before he married his present wife. He never thought of getting rid of me for the first one, you understand, for she wasn't a lady—though they do say she was a handsome creature! She was that low, you wouldn't believe!—just nobody at all! Her father was—what do you think?—a country blacksmith! And though he had me, he would marry her! Oh the men! the men! they are incomprehensible! It made me mad! To think he wouldn't marry me, and he would marry her, and I might have had him myself if I'd only been as hard-hearted and stood out as long! But the fact was, I was in love with your father! No one could help it, when he laid himself out to make you! I couldn't anyhow, though I tried hard. But she could! For all her beauty, she was that cold! ice was nothing to her! He told me so himself!—Well, when her time came, she died—never more than just saw the child, and died. I believe myself she died of fright; for sir Wilton told me he was the ugliest child ever came into this world! He must, said his father, have come straight from the devil, for no one else could have made him so ugly! Well, what must your father go and do next, but marry an earl's daughter!—nobody too good for him after the blacksmith's!—and within a month or so, what should his nurse do but walk off with the child! From that day to this, so far as ever I've heard, there's been no news of him. It's years and years that all the world has given him up for lost. Now, mark what I say: I feel morally certain that this Richard, as you call him, is that same child, and heir to all the Lestrange property! That woman, Tuke—what a name!—she's the nurse that carried him off; and who knows but the man married her for the chance of what the child's succession might bring them! They mean to tell the fellow, when the proper time comes, how they saved him from being murdered by his stepmother, and carried him off at the risk of their lives! Well they knew him for a pot of money! You may be certain they've got all the proofs safe! I hate the ugly devil! What right has he to come to an estate, and have my children looked down upon by Mrs. Bookbinder! I'll put a spoke in her wheel, though! I'll have one little finger in their pie! They shan't burn their mouths with it—no, not they!' I treasured every word my mother said—I was so glad all the while to think of Richard as the head of the family. I could not help the feeling that I belonged to the family, for was not the same blood in Richard and in us? 'Alice,' my mother said, 'mark my words! That Richard, as you call him, is heir to the title and estate! But if you speak one word on the subject until I give you leave, to your Richard or to any live soul, I'll tear your tongue out—I will!—And you know well that what I say, I do!' I knew well that poor mamma very seldom did what she said, and I was not afraid of her; but I grew more and more afraid of doing anything to interfere with Richard's prospects. I met him one night in Regent-street, a terrible, stormy night, and was so fluttered at seeing him, and so frightened lest I should let something out that might injure him, that I nearly killed myself by running against a lamp-post in my hurry to get away from him. But to be quite honest with you, Barbara, what I was most afraid of was, that he would go on falling in love with me; and that, when he found out what we were to each other, it would break his heart: I have heard of such a thing! For you see I durst not tell him! And besides, it mightn't be so, after all! So I had to be cruel to him! He must have thought me a brute! And now for him to appear, far away from everywhere, just in time to save me from dying of cold and hunger—ain't it wonderful?"

But Barbara sat silent. It was her turn to sit thinking and thinking. Why had the strange story come to her ears? There must be something for her to do in the next chapter of it!

"How much do you think Richard may know about the thing?" she asked.

"I don't believe he has a suspicion that he is anything but the son of the bookbinder," Alice answered. "If Mrs. Tuke did take him, I wonder why it really was. What do you think, Barbara? To me she does not look at all a designing woman. She may be a daring one: I could fancy her sticking at nothing she saw reason for! If she did it she must have done it for the sake of the child!"

"It was much too great a risk to run for any advantage to herself," assented Barbara "Then they have had to provide for him all the time! Have they any children of their own?"

"I don't think any."

"Then it is possible she took such a fancy to the child she was nursing, that she could not bear to part with him. I have heard of women like that, out with us.—But what are we to do, Alice? Is it right to leave the thing so? Ought we not to do anything?"

"I don't know; I can't tell a bit!" answered Alice. "I have thought and thought, lying alone in the night, but never could make up my mind. Supposing you were sure it was so, there is yet the danger of interfering with those who know all about him, and can do the best for him; and there's the danger of what my mother might be tempted to do the moment any one moved in the matter. To hasten the thing might spoil all!—Isn't it strange, Barbara, how much your love for your mother seems independent of her—her character?"

"I don't know;—yes, I think you are right. There is my mother, who has no guile in her, but is ready to burn you to ashes before you know what she is angry about! When you trust her, and go to her for help, she is ready to die for you. I love her with all my heart, but I can't say she's an exemplary woman. I don't think Mr. Wingfold—that's our clergyman—would say so either, though he professes quite an admiration of her."

Thereupon Barbara told Alice the story of her mother's behaviour in church, and how the parson had caught her.

"But nobody knows to this day," she concluded, "whether he intended so to catch her, or was only teaching his people by a parable, and she caught herself in its meshes. Caught she was, anyhow, and has never entered the church since! But she speaks very differently of the clergyman now."

"I feel greatly tempted sometimes," resumed Alice, "to let Richard know; for, surely, whatever be the projects of other people concerning him, a man has the right to know where he came from!"

"Yes," answered Barbara, "a man must have the right to know what other people know about him! And yet it would be a pity to ruin the plans of good people who had all the time been working and caring for him. I wonder if he was in danger from lady Ann? I have heard out there of terrible things done to get one's way! She is a death-like woman! His nurse might well be afraid of what his stepmother might do! I can quite fancy her making off with him in an agony of terror lost he should be poisoned, or smothered, or buried alive! But what if they sent him away, with a hint to the nurse that his absence might as well be permanent? What if any search they made for him was nothing but a farce? I wish we knew what ground there is for inquiring whether he may not be the child that was lost—if indeed there was a child lost! I have not heard at the house any allusion to such an occurrence."

Much more talk ensued. The girls came to the conclusion that, for the present, they must do nothing that might let the secret out of their keeping. They must wait and watch: when the right thing grew plain, they would do it!