Barbara Ladd

by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

  CHAPTER XIX.

  That night, when she was going to bed, came Barbara's really deepreaction from the exaltation and excitement which had possessed hersince the morning with Mistress Mehitable. The joy of her uncle'scoming, the whirl of childish delight over the presents he had broughther, had swept her spirits to a pinnacle which could not be maintained.She slipped, and fell down on the other side.

  First she lighted the four candles that stood, two on each side of themirror, on her shining mahogany dressing-table. Then she undressed,put on her long, white nightgown, and said her prayers with a troubledalternation of fervour and forgetfulness. She was slipping. Then, oneby one, she looked her presents well over again, noted that each wasjust as perfect as it had seemed to her every other one of the dozentimes she had examined it, and wondered with a pang what had become ofall their magic. Her scintillant delight in them had faded to a meredull drab perception of their merits. Her eyes filled, and a lump rosein her throat. She was far over the crest of the pinnacle, on thecold, enshadowed side of the steep.

  The one kitten, whom she had named "Mr. Grim,"--a round-faced,round-eyed gray and white furred baby, not yet accustomed to the lossof his two saucer mates,--crept snuggling against her bare ankles andmewed mildly, begging to be noticed. Barbara picked it up, fondled itin her bosom, threw herself down on the bed with it, and burst into apassion of tears. She felt as if she had been long, long away. Shewas poignantly homesick for her old self, her old childishness. Theburden of being grown-up suddenly arose, thrust itself upon her, andgrew great and terrifying and not to be borne. She was oppressed, too,with self-reproach. Absorbed in vivid and novel sensations, during thepast few eventful days she had not thought as much as usual about herold comrades,--the kittens, Keep, Black Prince, and Mercy Chapman. Andnow in her weakness she thought they had suffered from her neglect. Asa matter of fact, the difference had been purely in her own mind. Thekittens, who were quite dependent upon her, had been as tenderly caredfor as ever, but while caring for them she had thought of other thingsmore novel and significant. In giving away two of them she had donejust what she had planned and promised from the first. But now shescourged herself for heartlessness and inconstancy, pretending she hadsent them away just because she was tired of taking care of them andwanted to be free for new interests.

  "Did its missis forget all about the poor little lonely baby, and sendaway her other babies, and get cruel and hard-hearted, just because shethought she was grown-up, and a new friend came along?" she murmured,after the first tempest was over, to the gray and white kitten nowpurring comfortably against her soft throat. She sat up in bed with itto caress it more effectively.

  "She is a bad missis, and perfectly horrid!" she went on, between sobs;and the kitten, who did not mind damp, was highly pleased. "She hasbeen perfectly horrid. But to-morrow she's going to be just her oldself again, and take up the tuck in her petticoats, and fix her hairlike it was before we ran away. And we'll go to Doctor Jim and MercyChapman and just _snatch_ back those other poor babies; and we'll allgo off together down into the back garden, by our apple-tree, and havea lovely time. And--and--yes, we _will_ forgive old Debby, and go andsee her to-morrow. We'll take Uncle Bob, and then there won't be anybother about explanations."

  Then her tears flowed forth anew, till the kitten was quiteuncomfortably wet; and, with fresh resolves to be all child again onthe morrow, she sobbed herself to sleep, with the thick hair tangledover her eyes and grieving lips.

  But the long, sweet sleep brought complete renewal to Barbara's spentforces, and waking found her composedly happy, with a blessed sense ofproblems solved and desired things coming to pass. Her heart wasa-brim with sunshine, but the only sunshine in the room was that sheheld in her heart, for the light that came through the diamond paneswas gray, and the sky behind the leafy branch was gray, and, as shelooked, the first of the rain came, blown in streaming gusts againstthe glass, and shedding a narrow line of drops across the polishedfloor. One leaf of the window was open, and Barbara sprang from bed toshut it, laughing as the cold drops spattered her feet. She had noquarrel with the rain that day, there being enough pleasures indoors tokeep any maid's mind busy.

  After breakfast, however, when she found that Uncle Bob was going downinto the village to call on the Reverend Jonathan Sawyer, to drink aglass with Squire Gillig in his snug office behind the store, and topay his respects to Doctor John and Doctor Jim, then Barbara felt thelure of the rain, and said she would go with him.

  "I _love_ the rain," she explained,--"and it's so nice for thecomplexion, too! I'll go and tell Mercy Chapman about my presents, andtake some jellies to her poor sick mother, while you are talkingpolitics in the squire's back office, Uncle Bob. Then I'll meet you atDoctor John's office, and we'll step into Doctor Jim's, and bring bothof them up to dinner with us, so we'll all be together as much aspossible. Won't we, dear?" And she paused in the task of strapping onher goloshes, to appeal to Mistress Mehitable.

  "You are proposing to make a lot of trouble for your aunt!" protestedGlenowen.

  "Indeed she is not," began Mistress Mehitable, warm to second Barbara'sproposal. But before she could say more, there was a wilder gust amongthe trees outside, a fiercer burst of rain against the windows, and,with a huge stamping in the vestibule, came Doctor Jim, as if blown inby storm. All hurried to meet him, where he stood dripping in the halldoor, and the expedition to the village was postponed. An hour latercame Doctor John, even wetter and more dishevelled than his brother,from the bedside of a patient at the opposite end of the village. Thetwo had planned that theirs should be the hospitality of that day, butthe storm and Mistress Mehitable together triumphed. The old house wasmerry all day long with gay voices, its maiden fragrances of lavenderand rose touched genially with breaths of the mild Virginia weed. AndBarbara forgot, completely and for ever, how near she had been todrowning the furry "Mr. Grim" in the tears of her regret for her lostchildishness.

  Toward sunset the rain stopped, and a copper flame was reflected upfrom the windows of a cottage visible to the eastward through thetrees; and the western sky, opening along the horizon under greatsmoky-purple battlements of cloud, revealed unspeakable glories ofclear gold. Throughout the rare hour, till dusk fell, the thrushessang ecstatically, so unusual an outburst that Barbara dragged everyone out upon the wet porch to listen to the thrilling, cloistral-purecadences, the infinite tranquillities of tone. So inspiring was thathour in the front of twilight that even the catbird down in the backgarden forgot that he had been for days too busy to sing, and mountedthe topmost bough of a tall cherry, and eased his soul in a chaos ofgolden phrases.

  Very early the next morning,--the kind of morning when the sunlightitself seems as if it were just sparkling from a bath in coldfountains,--Barbara and Glenowen started out for a paddle across thelake to visit old Debby. They went through the barn-yard, through thebars, through the pasture, and through the wood; and in response to hisbounding and wagging appeals, they took Keep, the mastiff, with them.They went early, in order to be back in time for the dinner with DoctorJohn and Doctor Jim. And Barbara insisted on letting Keep go in thecanoe, that she might erase from his generous heart the memory of herharshness on the morning of her great adventure. At her command, thedog stepped in so circumspectly, and lay down with so nice a balance,that Uncle Bob was impressed.

  "The dog's a born canoeist, Barb," he declared, as he headed up theshore instead of straight out across the lake. "I wonder you ever hadthe heart to leave him behind,--and to take those kittens, who couldn'ttell a canoe from a horse-trough."

  Barbara would have answered that the kittens needed her more than Keepdid, who had all the world for his friend; but her thoughts werediverted by the direction in which her uncle was steering.

  "Why do you go this way, Uncle Bob?" she demanded, looking at him overher shoulder while her dripping paddle-blade rested on the gunwale.

  "I want to examine a certain big rock, where a certain smal
l girl didcertain strange things!" replied Glenowen, gravely.

  Barbara flushed, and drooped her head.

  "I didn't know you knew about that, Uncle Bob!" she said, in a lowvoice. "Don't let's go there!"

  "All right!" assented Glenowen, cheerfully. He had recalled the oldtragedy of deliberate purpose, because, being of Welsh blood, andsuperstitious, he was afraid Barbara's unparalleled high spirits mightbring her some keen disappointment. He had purposed to discipline herwith a dash of bitter memories, that he might avert the envy of thegods; and when her head drooped he had accomplished his purpose. ButBarbara had changed her mind.

  "No!" she said. "Let's go close to the rock, and look right down intothe water, just where I was lying when old Debby pulled me out!"

  And they did so. The sand was clear gold down there, but as theylooked a huge eel wriggled over it. Barbara shuddered, and seized herpaddle once more to get away.

  "It's good for me to be reminded, Uncle Bob," she said. "I forget,when I am happy, how wicked and foolish I can be when things go wrong!But oh, you can never know how unhappy I used to be! You'd have cometo me if you had known, Uncle Bob!"

  "Poor little girlie!" murmured Glenowen, his kind brown eyes moisteningat the corners.

  "But I was crazy, both naughty and crazy, and it was all my fault!"went on Barbara, resting her paddle again as the canoe skimmed fleetlyout across the water, away from the sorrowful spot. "It's all sodifferent now! And it's always going to be different!"

  Glenowen smiled to himself, as he was apt to do when confronted withany of the pathetic ironies of life. Barbara would not have liked himto smile, for to her a smile meant amusement or mirth, and she couldnever learn to appreciate the depth of tenderness that might lurkbeneath a ripple of laughter. But she was looking straight ahead. Inhis heart and behind his smile, Glenowen said, "Child, dear child, isit all so securely different now, and just eight days gone since youclimbed out of your window before daybreak?" But aloud he said, aftera silence:

  "It is indeed most different, Barb, old girl? Some of your troublesare really done now, thrown into the dark corner with the discardeddollies. The others will keep bobbing up now and then, claiming oldacquaintance. But just you cut them dead. They are in sober truth notthe same, now that you are older and more responsible. Well I know,what so many forget, that childish sorrows, while they last, are themost bitter and hopeless of sorrows. The wall that a man steps overblots out a child's view of heaven."

  "How wonderfully you understand, Uncle Bob!" cried Barbara, with ardentappreciation.

  As they neared the other side of the lake, a kingfisher dropped like anazure wedge into the ripples, missed his prey, and flew off down to theoutlet clattering harshly in his throat. From the deep reeds of thepoint above the outlet a wide-winged bird got up heavily as the canoedrew near.

  "There goes my old blue heron!" shouted Barbara, gleefully. "Youshould have seen the way he fixed me with his glassy eyes as I passed,the morning I ran away!"

  "He is very old, and very wise, and thinks of lots of things besidesfrogs!" said Glenowen.

  They entered the outlet, and met old Debby's geese. The big gray andwhite gander, in the pride of many goslings, hissed fiercely at them asthey paddled past, so that Keep raised his head and gave him a look ofadmonition over the gunwale. The next turn brought them out in fullview of Debby's cabin, and straightway rose a clamorous outcry fromwatchful drakes and challenging chanticleers. The yellow pup ranbarking down from the steps, and Keep cocked a sympathetic ear.

  "Lie down, sir!" commanded Barbara, and Keep meekly suppressed hisbudding interest.

  Mrs. Debby Blue was spinning flax, on the hard-beaten clean earth somepaces in front of her threshold, when she saw and recognised herapproaching visitors. In the presence of Mr. Glenowen she read peace,for her shrewd perception of Barbara's character told her that the girlwould never have permitted her a glimpse of the cherished uncle exceptas a sign of favour. Nevertheless the grim old woman was conscious ofa sinking qualm at thought of the first straight look of Barbara'seyes. She knew she had betrayed her; and that knowledge was not whollymended by the fact that she knew she had done right to betray. Herlonely old heart so yearned to the child that she feared her reproachas she feared no other thing in life. She stopped her wheel, droppedher roll of flax, picked up her stick, and limped sturdily down towardthe landing.

  Before she had got half-way the canoe came to land, and Barbaraunceremoniously skipped ashore.

  "Lie down, Keep!" she ordered again, and then, leaving Glenowen to landand follow at leisure, she ran up the path to greet old Debby.

  "This does my old eyes good, Miss Barby!" exclaimed the old woman, hervoice a trifle unsteady.

  Barbara seized her, and kissed her heartily on both cheeks.

  "You were very bad to me, Debby," she cried, cheerfully, "but you'dhave been worse to me if you hadn't been bad to me! So I forgive you,and love you just the same, you old dear. The most _dreadful_ thingsmight have happened to me if it hadn't been for you!"

  Mrs. Blue heaved a huge sigh of relief; but the subject was toodifficult and delicate a one for her to expand upon. She gave Barbaraa vehement squeeze, looked her up and down, and exclaimed:

  "Land sakes alive, Miss Barby, why, if you hain't been an' growed upover night. What've they been doin' to you over there?"

  "It was _you_ did it, Debby, much as anybody!" And Barbara flicked herpetticoats audaciously before the old woman's eyes, to emphasise theiradded length. "Such lovely things have happened; and Aunt Hitty and Ihave made up; and I've so much to tell you, that I must come over someday and spend the whole day with you, after Uncle Bob goes away. Andhere's Uncle Bob himself, who only came day before yesterday, and hascome to see you, Debby dear, before any one else in Second Westings."

  As Barbara stopped breathless, Glenowen came up and grasped the olddame warmly by the hand.

  "You're looking ten years younger than when I saw you two years ago,Debby!" he declared, sweetly and transparently mendacious.

  "'Tain't so much my youth, as my beauty, that I set store by, Mr.Glenowen, thankin' you jest the same!" retorted the old woman, as sheled them into her cabin for refreshment. She was a cunning cook, ifsomewhat unconventional in her recipes, and she remembered withsatisfaction that Barbara's uncle had seemed to share Barbara'sweakness for her concoctions. Eight days ago she would have offeredBarbara milk to drink; but now she brought out only a strong root winefor which she was famous, a beverage which was extolled throughout thetownship as a most efficacious preventative of all disorders.

  "It's a wonder how letting down one's petticoats seems to destroy one'sfondness for milk!" said Barbara.

  Instead of sitting on the edge of the high bed and swinging her legs,as she would have done eight days ago, she sat on a bench and kept herfeet on the floor. And from this old Debby realised, with a pang, thatthe child had truly grown to womanhood.