_ CHAPTER XIX. MRS. WYLDER AND BARBARA
To make all this quite credible to a doubting reader, it would be necessary to tell Mrs. Wylder's history from girlhood. She had had a very defective education, and what there was of it was all for show. Then she was married far too young, and to a man unworthy of any good woman. She indeed was not a good woman, but she was capable of being made worse; and in the bush, where she passed years not a few, and in cities afterward, she met women and men more lawless yet than herself or her husband. Overbearing where her likings were concerned, and full of a certain generosity where but her interests were in question, the slackness of the social bonds in the colonies had favoured her abnormal development. It is difficult to say how much man or woman is the worse for doing, when freed from restraint, what he or she would have been glad to do before, but for the restraint. Many who go to the colonies, and there to the dogs, only show themselves such as they dared not appear at home: they step on a steeper slope, and arrive, not at the pit, for they were in that already, but at the bottom of it, so much the faster. There were, however, in Mrs. Wylder, lovely rudimentary remnants of a good breed. She inherited feelings which gave her a certain intermittent and fugitive dignity, of some service to others in her wilder times, and to herself when she came into contact with an older civilisation. She would occasionally do a right generous thing--not seldom give with a freedom and judge with a liberality which were mainly rooted in carelessness.
She had much confidence in her daughter; and it said well for the mother that, with all her experience, she yet had this confidence--and none the less that she had never taken pains to instruct her in what was becoming. The most she had done in this way was once to snatch from her hand and throw in the fire a novel she had herself, a moment before, finished with unquestioning acceptance. If she had found her behaving like some of her acquaintance to whose conduct she did not give a second thought, for her friends might do as they pleased so long as they did not offend _her_, she would certainly, in some of her moods at least, have killed her.
While compelled, from lack of service, to employ herself in house affairs, she neither ate nor drank more than seemed good for her; but as soon as she had but to live and be served, she began to counterbalance _ennui_ with self-indulgence, and continued to do so until the death of her boy, ever after which she had sought refuge from grief in narcotics. Possibly she would not have behaved as she did in church, but that her nervous being was a very sponge for morphia. Born to be a strong woman, she was a slave to her impulses, and, one of the weakest of her kind, went into a rage at the least show of opposition.
Scarcely had Mr. Wingfold left the room, when in came Barbara in her riding-habit, with the glow of joyous motion upon her face, for she had just ridden from Mortgrange.
"How do you do, mamma?" she said, but did not come within a couple of yards of her. "I've had such a ride--as straight as any crow could fly, between the two stations! I never could hit the line before. But I got a country-fellow to point me out a landmark or two, and here I am in just half the time I should have taken by the road! Such jumps!"
"You're a madcap!" said her mother. "You'll be brought home on a shutter some day! Mark my words, Bab! You'll see!--or at least I shall; you'll be past seeing! But it don't matter; it's what we're made for! Die or be killed, it's all one! I don't care!"
"I do though, mamma! I don't want to be killed just yet--and I don't mean to be! But I must have a second horse! I begin to suspect Miss Brown of treating me like a child. She takes care of me! I mean to let her see what _I_ can do if _she's_ up to it!"
"You'll do nothing of the kind! I'll have her shot if you go after any of your old pranks! And, while I think of it, Bab--your father has set his heart on your marrying Mr. Lestrange: I can see it perfectly, and I won't have it! If I hear of anything of that sort between you, I'll set a heavy foot on it.--How long have you been there this time?"
"A week.--But why shouldn't I marry Mr. Lestrange if I like?"
"Because your father has set his heart on it, I tell you! Isn't that enough, you tiresome little wretch? I _will not_ have it--not if you break your heart over it!--There!"
Barbara burst out in a laugh that rang like a bronze bell.
"Break my heart for Mr. Lestrange! There's not a man in the world I would break my little finger for! But my heart! that is too funny! You needn't be uneasy, mamma; I don't like Arthur Lestrange one bit, and I wouldn't marry him if you and papa too wanted me. Oh, such a proper young man! He doesn't think me fit company for his sister!"
"He said so! and you didn't give him a cut over the eyes with your whip? My God!"
"Gracious, no! He never says anything half so amusing! He's scorchingly polite! I would sooner fall in love with the bookbinder!"
"The bookbinder? Who's that? You mean the tutor, I suppose! I'm not up to the slang of this old brute of a country!"
"No, mamma; there is a man binding--or mending rather, the books in the library. He's going to teach me to shoe Miss Brown! Papa wouldn't like me to marry a blacksmith--I mean a bookbinder--would he?"
"Certainly not."
"Then you would, mamma?" said Bab demurely, with two catherine-wheels of fun in her downcast eyes.
"If you go to do anything mad now, I'll--"
"Don't strain your innocent invention, mammy! I think I'll take Mr. Lestrange! Better anger one than both of you!"
"Tease me any more with your nonsense, and I'll set your father on you! Be off with you!" _