Chapter VIII: Concerning Ellen Barnes

MISS LEIGHTON'S maid—Ellen Barnes—was a plain, sad-faced, middle-aged woman who had been with her present employer for many years. She had known Mrs. Pringle before her marriage, and consequently, it was with considerable satisfaction and some astonishment that she saw the interest with which her mistress regarded the daughter of the niece, the very existence of whom she had ignored so long.

It cannot be said that Miss Leighton was on anything like confidential terms with her maid; but she trusted her, and she would have certainly been at a loss without the services of the quiet, rather spiritless woman who rarely spoke except in answer to a question.

Miss Leighton had now been nearly a fortnight at Higher Brimley, and had had several interviews with her little great-niece on the beach, and had walked with her along the sheep-track on the cliffs to look at the sea-pinks. But she had not yet taken tea with Mrs. Tiddy as had been suggested, and when, one sunshiny morning, Peggy arrived with an invitation for her to do so that afternoon, she accepted it immediately.

"Of course I will come," she replied, after Peggy—rosy with the exercise of walking—had delivered her message. "Please give my kind regards to Mrs. Tiddy and say I accept her invitation with pleasure. Did you walk here by yourself, child?"

"No," answered Peggy. She had been ushered into Miss Leighton's sitting-room by Ellen Barnes, who had been on an errand to the post office for her mistress and had overtaken the little girl on her way home. "I started to come alone," she said, "but I had not gone far before I heard some one calling to me. It was Barnes. So we walked on together. What a very nice woman she is, Aunt Caroline! We had such a long talk!"

"Humph!" exclaimed Miss Leighton, rather surprised. "And, pray, what did you find to talk about?"

"Oh, about things at home, first of all," was the somewhat vague response. "My home, of course I mean. I did not know till to-day that Barnes knew my mother."

The little girl had taken the chair which had been placed for her close to the open window by which Miss Leighton was sitting, and the bright spring sunshine fell full upon her face framed in its golden curls. Certainly she made a very pretty picture.

"I like Barnes," she proceeded in a tone of decision as her companion vouchsafed no response. "How very fortunate you are to have such a nice woman for your maid, Aunt Caroline!"

"I believe she is thoroughly trustworthy," Miss Leighton remarked, somewhat astonished at this expression of opinion, "and that is a great deal to be able to say of any one. Barnes has been with me many years. I pay her good wages and she is not overworked. I believe she values her situation."

"Oh, yes, I am sure she does!" Peggy agreed earnestly.

"How can you tell, child?" Miss Leighton asked, a slightly amused smile curving her lips.

"She told me she did, Aunt Caroline."

"Did she?" There was gratification in the old lady's voice. "But—how strange of her to say so to you! She must have been very confidential."

"She was telling me about her brother, and how she values her situation with you because you pay her such good wages that she is able to send home more than half she earns. Oh, Aunt Caroline, when she told me about her brother, I thought how thankful I ought to be that God has only made me blind! Suppose I was like poor Barnes's brother: how much worse that would be!"

"What about Barnes's brother?" inquired Miss Leighton, in utter bewilderment. "I have never heard anything about my maid's relations; she has a week's holiday every summer; I suppose she goes to see them then. Stay—I think I remember hearing her once mention a mother, who, by the way, must be a very old woman, for Barnes herself is quite middle-aged."

"Barnes's mother is more than eighty years old, and she lives in a little village near Plymouth with her son. Oh, Aunt Caroline, he is only two years younger than Barnes, and he has been an idiot all his life!"

"Dear me!" exclaimed Miss Leighton, feeling really shocked. "I never heard that before. Barnes never told me."

Peggy looked intensely surprised for a minute, then an expression of comprehension crossed her face. "I expect she did not like to tell you," she said. "Perhaps she thought you would not be interested, you know."

"Why should she think that?" Miss Leighton questioned sharply.

The little girl was silent. She had heard Mrs. Tiddy say that Barnes looked a broken-spirited woman; and Mrs. Ford, when she had called at Lower Brimley a few days previously, had declared her to be a perfect slave to her mistress's whims, and wondered why she did not seek another situation with some one who, at any rate, would be less inconsiderate and exacting. In the conversation the little girl had had with Barnes, she had discovered the reason which induced her to keep her post. It was because it enabled her to do so much for her poor mother and her imbecile brother in their cottage home.

"Why should you think that?" Miss Leighton persisted. "Come, speak out, child! Don't be afraid of me!"

"I'm not," Peggy answered truthfully, for she was not in the least in awe of the old lady. "I meant that—that perhaps if you have never asked Barnes about her relations, she would think you would not care to hear about them. But it does seem so very odd that she should have lived with you so many years, and you should not know all about her mother and brother!"

"The brother is an idiot, you say?"

"Yes; but Barnes and her mother are very fond of him; it would break her mother's heart to be parted from him, and Barnes says they shall never be separated as long as God gives her health and strength to work. They get parish pay, and with what Barnes sends them they manage to live pretty comfortably. Oh, Aunt Caroline, mustn't it be dreadful to have a brother like that! Oh dear, I do think it is so very sad!" And the pitiful tears rose to Peggy's blue eyes and ran down her cheeks.

"You mustn't take other people's troubles to heart like that!" Miss Leighton exclaimed hastily.

"I feel so sorry for Barnes," Peggy said, with deepest sorrow in her tone, "because I am sure it must make her very unhappy to think of her brother and her old mother sometimes. She must wish to see them so much, and always be wondering how they are getting on. Mrs. Tiddy says Barnes looks a very sad woman. I wish I could do something to make her happier."

"I said so to her just now," she continued, with a brightening face, "and what do you think she answered? That I had helped her by being sorry for her brother; she said she wouldn't have told me anything about him if I hadn't been afflicted myself, and it warmed her heart to know I cared. I told her I should pray to God every night to make her brother right in his mind, and she said she was afraid that would never be in this world. Poor fellow! He's like me, Aunt Caroline, in that way, isn't he? He will have to bear his cross as long as he lives, and his cross is so much heavier than mine."

A silence followed, during which Miss Leighton sat gazing, unseeingly, out of the window. There was a mist before her eyes, and a lump in her throat which prevented her uttering a word. By-and-by Peggy rose to go.

"Mrs. Tiddy said she hoped you would come early this afternoon," she observed. "Please do, for I've so many things to show you."

"I certainly will," Miss Leighton replied. "Shall Barnes take you home?"

"Oh no, thank you, I know the way quite well; I have only to keep to the road. Good-bye, Aunt Caroline—till this afternoon."

Miss Leighton stood at the window and watched the little girl out of sight, a gentler expression than usual on her face. Then she resumed her seat and took up the book she had been reading before the child's arrival; but it failed to interest her now, for her mind was full of uneasy thoughts. Barnes had lived with her for nearly twenty years, she reflected; and yet how little she really knew of the woman! Well, it could not be expected that she would interest herself in her maid's concerns. And yet, how surprised Peggy had been at discovering her ignorance of aged mother and her imbecile son. Peggy had learnt all there was to know about them in less than half an hour.

Miss Leighton paid her servants liberal wages—she was never stingy where money was concerned—and it had often occurred to her that Barnes must be of a miserly disposition, for she dressed very plainly and it had been impossible not to notice that she begrudged spending money. Now she understood where the woman's wages had gone. Barnes had not been making a purse for herself, but spending it upon those dear to her, and, all the while, she had been regarding her as a mean, poor-spirited creature.

It was difficult to realise that the humble, silent woman who had borne with her mistress's haughty temper so patiently, had been leading a life of self-sacrifice and self-repression from the noblest of motives; but Miss Leighton now realised that such had been the case, for Peggy had thrown a new light upon the maid's character.

What had made Barnes tell Peggy about her brother? the old lady wondered. Was it because her heart had been hungry for sympathy, and she had known instinctively that she would receive it from the blind child? Probably so. She had preferred to confide in a stranger, rather than in the mistress whom she knew to be accounted a charitable woman—one lavish in giving of her wealth.

"I don't think she can really be charitable, if she isn't kind in little ways," Peggy had said ingenuously, passing her childish judgment on her mother's rich aunt, and the words returned forcibly to Miss Leighton's mind now, and cause her a strange pang, whilst she asked herself if she had ever been really kind to Ellen Barnes, or for that matter, to any member of her household. She was a lonely old woman; but, after all, was it not greatly owing to her own fault? She had certainly never been "kind in little ways."