“Exactly! Nor do I care much about religion, but I could not live without my Father in heaven. I don’t believe anybody can live without him.”

“I see,” said Richard.

He thought he saw, but he did not see, and could not help smiling in his heart as he said to himself, “I have lived a good many years without him!”

Wingfold saw the shadow of the smile and blamed himself for having spoken too soon.

“When do you go?” he asked.

“I think I shall go tomorrow. I am at my grandfather’s now.”

“If I can be of use to you, let me know.”

“I will, sir. And I thank you heartily. There’s nothing a man is so grateful for as friendliness.”

“The obligation is mutual,” said Wingfold.

27. The Wylders

— Twenty-Seven —

The Wylders

A new experience had come to Mrs. Wylder. Her passion over the death of her son, her prolonged contention with her husband, her protest against him whom she called the Almighty, and the public consequences of the same, had all combined and resulted in a sudden sinking of the vital forces of her life. She who had once been a burning fiery furnace was now like a heap of cooling ashes on a hearth. She had never before known what it was to feel unfit. Power and strength had so constantly seemed part of her very self that she had never thought of them. But now suddenly they were drained away from her.

Her Bab was now the mother’s one delight. Whereas her love for her lost twin had been in great part partisanship, defence, and opposition, her love for Barbara was full of tenderness without pride. Finding the castle of her self, which she had regarded as impregnable, now crumbling, she was defenceless, and thus discovered refuge in her little maid, the daughter she had for so long ignored. Good is it that we are not what we seem to ourselves “in our hours of ease,” for then we should never seek the Father! The loss of all that the world counts first things is a thousandfold repaid in the waking to higher need. It proves the presence of the divine in the lower good, that its loss is so potent. A man may send his gaze over the clear heaven and suspect no God. But when the stifling cloud comes down, folds itself about him, shuts from him the expanse of the universe, he begins to long for a hand, a sign, some shadow of presence.