Barbara Ladd Part 23

"Before we could recover our astonishment, Robert and the doctor together were bending over the wounded man, and had his shirt ripped open. 'I've got it, eh?' said Carberry, faintly. 'A fair, clean thrust, an' served me d.a.m.n well right!' And he held out his hand to Bob,--who grasped it with both his, and looked now, all of a sudden, like a boy ready to cry.

"'Stuff and nonsense, Captain!' exclaimed the doctor. 'You've not got your quietus with _this_ bare bodkin. You'll be all right, sound as ever, in a month, a fortnight maybe!'

"'Thank G.o.d!' cried Robert.

"'My sentiments exactly!' said Carberry, his voice stronger with the knowledge that he was not dying. 'Gault, my compliments, with my best apologies! Great sword, my boy, great--' and with that he swooned from the pain and loss of blood. And we, very happy that all had ended so happily, got him to the coach, and so home. And the rest, dear Mistress Ladd, you know!"

"A mighty interesting story, I admit!" said Barbara. "But still I ask, of what especial, immediate interest to me?"

Waite looked at her curiously. Was it possible she could be so blind?

But her wide eyes were innocent of all comprehension. It suddenly occurred to him that, new come to town as she was, she found it impossible to imagine _her_ name the theme of tongues. He began to understand.

"You know the lady," said he, and paused.

"Well, sir, 'tis possible. I have met many in the few days that I have been in New York. What is her name--since you seem to hold it an important matter."

"Her name, dear lady--her name is one that stirs a thrill of admiring homage in all our hearts. It is--_Mistress Barbara Ladd_!"

Barbara caught her breath, and her eyes dilated.

"What?" she cried, though she had heard quite clearly.

"Her name is Mistress Barbara Ladd!" repeated Jerry Waite.

"Oh, Mr. Waite. No! No! Don't tell me it was on my account that Robert fought. Impossible! He might have been killed! And I thought--" but she stopped herself in time, without saying what it was she had thought.

Jerry Waite became serious.

"It seems to me, dear lady, that your thought, whatever it was, did Gault an injustice," said he, gently. "And that is my explanation. Am I forgiven?"

Barbara conquered her distress. This was the easier--after the first pang of remorse--because the fact that Robert had not failed her soon overtopped in her mind the fact that she had failed Robert. That unknown woman--the hateful vision vanished in a burst of light. The ache of loss was healed in her heart. She was reinstated, too, in her self-esteem. New York grew bright again. Her conquests were once more worth while. Robert should behold them all,--and be one of them,--the most subjugated of them all. At last her face grew radiant,--her eyes dancing, her teeth flashing, her mouth the reddest rose, her clear brown cheeks softly aflush.

"Yes, indeed, Mr. Waite," she cried, holding out her hand. "It is a beautiful story, and wins you a very high place in my regard. You may stay and talk to me till dinner-time, if you like; and then my uncle will be glad to have you dine with us!"

The first part of the invitation Waite accepted with alacrity, and cursed himself bitterly that he had an engagement to prevent him staying for dinner. In the conversation that followed Barbara gained him and chained him fast, not as a mad, intoxicated lover, but as one of the best and most loyal of her friends. But the moment he was gone she rushed to her scrutoir and in fierce haste scribbled a note. It ran:

"DEAR ROBERT:--I did not understand at all. I thought something quite different from the truth. I have just found out about things. Please come and talk to me till dinner-time, if you like; and then let me tell you how perfectly horrid I think myself.

"BARBARA."

This she sealed with a care that contrasted curiously with the haste with which she had written it. Then she called her maid and sent it around to the stately-doorwayed office on Bowling Green.

The answer that came was merely a bunch of dark red roses, with never a written word; but Barbara found it quite satisfactory. To Robert it would have seemed superfluous to have said he would come. Barbara made her toilet with especial care, selecting everything with a view to making herself look as nearly as possible like the Barbara of the old Second Westings days. As she surveyed herself in the gla.s.s, she was astonished at the result. Had she really put the hands of time back five years? As she remembered, she had looked just so on the afternoon when Robert came, and found her in the apple-tree reading "Clarissa."

It was three o'clock already,--and Robert had been waiting already half an hour in the drawing-room below,--but she took yet a few minutes more for a finishing touch. She basted up a deep tuck in her petticoat,--about half an inch off for each year blotted from her calendar,--and then, with flaming eyes and mouth wreathed in laughter, she ran down to receive her guest. It was the direct obverse of the meeting she had planned.

"Did you ride over, Robert? Or did you come in the canoe?" she asked, as if she had but that moment jumped down out of the apple-tree.

"Barbara!" he cried, and seized and kissed both hands.

"I was beginning to fear that you had forgotten the way to Second Westings!" she went on, in gay reproach. "Why, it is _weeks_ since you were over; and the young catbirds in the currant bush have grown their wings and flown; and the goldenrod's in flower; and the 'Early Harvests' are beginning to turn red on the old apple-tree over by the gate; and how will you explain your long absence, sir, to Aunt Hitty, and Doctor John, and Doctor Jim, I'd like to know!"

Robert was devouring her with his eyes as she spoke. "Oh, you do indeed look just as you did that day I found you in the apple-tree!" he cried, at last. "So weary long ago,--yet now, sweet lady, it seems but now!"

"Let us play it is but now," laughed Barbara.

"Yes," said Robert,--"but _please_ don't send me right away to Doctor Jim, as you did that morning! I will try not to incur your displeasure. And don't be in such a hurry to get back to 'Clarissa' as you were then!"

So all the afternoon they talked the language and the themes of Second Westings, with the difference that Barbara was all graciousness, instead of her old mixture of acid and sweet. And when Glenowen came in to supper he was admitted to the game, and played it with a relish.

And when, after supper, the three went riding, they took what they swore to be the Westings Landing Road,--though certain of the landmarks, as they could not but agree, looked unfamiliar. Almost they persuaded themselves that on their return they might entreat Mistress Mehitable to brew them a sack posset.

It was not till three days later, when Robert was begging more than his share of dances for a ball to be given that night at Government House, that Barbara explained--lightly and laughingly, but in a way that suffered Robert to understand--her quite inadequate reasons for having treated him so cavalierly on the evening after his duel.

CHAPTER XXVII.

For the next few weeks Barbara enjoyed herself without stint, and found New York quite all that she had painted it. To Robert she now vouchsafed sufficient favour to keep him fairly happy and good company,--or, at least, to enable him to make himself good company by an effort of will. Yet she held him on the chilly side of that frontier which separates the lover from the comrade. He was her favoured escort, but not so favoured that other admirers could fancy themselves warned from the field. And he was kept restless, tormented, jealous. He was made to feel--as others were allowed to think--that his primacy in privilege was based solely upon old friendship and familiar memories. But the moment he attempted to crowd aside the new friends,--among whom Cary Patten, Jerry Waite, and young Paget caused him especial worry,--Barbara would seem to forget all their intimacy and relegate him to a position somewhat more remote than that of the merest acquaintance. The utmost that he durst claim at any time was a certain slight precedence in her train of devoted cavaliers. She danced, rode, flirted, with something so near approaching impartiality that she let no moth quite feel itself a fool in scorching its wings at her eyes. Yet no one could presume upon her graciousness; and no one but Cary Patten had the temerity to push his suit to the point where she was put on the defensive. Cary Patten was promptly dismissed. But when he as promptly came back on the very first occasion, she had forgotten the matter, and remembered only how she liked his honest boyishness, his sanguine boldness. Cary, applying one of those general rules which were apt to be so inapplicable in the special case of Barbara, decided that not one, nor indeed a dozen, refusals need reduce him to despair! And Barbara, when afterward she came to think of it, liked Cary Patten the better because he had not sulked over his defeat.

Meanwhile Barbara was exercising a restraint upon one point, which was in flat contradiction to her wonted directness. She was carefully avoiding, in Robert's presence, a discussion of those political questions with which the whole country, from Maine to Georgia, was then seething. This was easier than it would have been even a few weeks before, for the reason that as the differences grew more deadly society grew more cautious about letting them intrude themselves among its smooth observances. Barbara, in fact, had come to fear the inevitable discussion with Robert. She knew he was identified with the Tory party, but she did not know how far. And she feared her own heat of partisanship not less than his resolution--which she called obstinacy.

So, by tacit consent, she and Robert gave wide berth to the perilous theme; till at length their avoidance of it, when it was thrilling on the very air they breathed, made it begin to loom all the larger and darker between them. Presently the apprehension that it was an impending peril to their relation drove Robert to speak, precipitately, on the subject that was bursting his heart night and day.

They had just come in from an afternoon ride, and were alone in the drawing-room. Barbara was in high good humour; and Robert seized the moment to ask leave to return that same evening.

"I'm sorry, Robert! I'd love to have you come," she replied. "But I've promised the evening to Cary Patten. He wants to bring his fiddle and try over some new music with me."

Robert's face darkened.

"Cary Patten seems to be here all the time!" he exclaimed, with natural exaggeration.

"What nonsense! You know that's not true, Robert. He's not here _half_ as much as you are. But if he were, what of it? He's very good-looking, and Uncle Bob and I both like him, and, indeed, he's _much_ more _entertaining_ than you, Robert!"

Robert walked quickly across the room and back, then seized both her slim brown wrists in a grip whose severity she rather liked. She felt that something disturbing was at hand, however, and she braced her wits to manage it.

"Barbara,--my lady,--my lady,--I love you!" he said, very quietly.

"Of course, Robert! I know that," she answered, with composure, smiling up at him, and making no effort to free her wrists. Yet in some way her smile checked him, as he was about to crush her in his arms. His breast ached fiercely so to crush her, yet it was impossible.

"With all my heart and soul, my lady," he went on, his voice on the dead level of intense emotion, "with every drop of blood in my body, I love you, I have loved you, ever since the old child days in Second Westings!"

"That is very dear of you, Robert," she responded, her voice and eyes showing nothing but frank pleasure at his words. "But, of course, I have always known that," which was not quite true, though it seemed true to her at the moment.

He could not tell what there was in this answer to hold him back, or if it was the frankness of her eyes that daunted him, but he began to feel that, so far from clasping her to his heart and satisfying his lips upon her eyes, her hair, her mouth, he had no right even to be holding her wrists as he was. He flung them from him, drew back a step, and searched her face with a desperate look.

"And you--you do not love me at all!"

Barbara looked thoughtful, regretful.