Richard suffered not a little at times from his enforced silence—what might not happen because he must not speak? But hearing nothing discouraging from his grandfather, he comforted himself in hope. He knew that in him he had a strong ally, and that Barbara loved the hot-hearted blacksmith, and recognized in him a more genuine breeding, as well as a far greater capacity, than in either sir Wilton or her father.

He therefore toiled on doing his duty, and receiving in himself the reward of the same.

“Why do I never see you on Miss Brown?” Wingfold asked Barbara one day.

“For a reason I think I ought not to tell you.”

“Then don’t tell me,” returned the parson.

But by a mixture of induction and intuition, he saw into the situation perhaps more than Barbara realized, and did what he could to make up for it, by taking her every now and then on a long walk or drive with his wife and their little boy. He gave her strong, hopeful things to read. The song of hope is indeed written in men's hearts, but few sing it. Yet it is of all songs the sorest-needed of struggling men.

Heart and brain, Wingfold was full of both humour and pathos. In their walks and drives, many a serious subject would give occasion to the former, and many a merry one to the latter. Sometimes he would take a nursery rhyme for his theme, and expound upon it so that at one instant Barbara would burst into the gayest laughter, and the next have to restrain her tears.

Rarely would Wingfold enter a sickroom, especially in a poor cottage, with a long face and a sermon in his soul. Almost always he walked lightly in, with a cheerful look and some kind of odd story on his tongue, well pleased when he could make the sufferer laugh—better pleased sometimes when he had made him sorry. He did not find those that laughed the readiest were necessarily the hardest to make sorry. He moved his people by infecting their hearts with the feeling in his own.

Having now for many years cared only for the will of God, he was full of joy. For the will of the Father is the root of all his children’s gladness, of all their laughter and merriment. The child that loves the will of the Father is at the heart of things. His will is with the motion of the eternal wheels. The eyes of all those wheels are opened upon him, and he knows whence he came. Happy and fearless and hopeful, he knows himself the child of him from whom he came, and his peace and joy break out in light. He rises and shines.

No other bliss, creative and energetic, exists on earth or in heaven than the will of the Father.

48. The Will

— Forty-Eight —

The Will