Barbara Ladd Part 28

"Lads!" he said, lifting his head with difficulty. "Lads of Second Westings! Shall we let these insolent scoundrels talk to us that way?"

"No, sir! No, sir! No, sir!" shouted a dozen voices,--whereupon Barbara turned and beamed upon them unutterable favour. The landlord, with several other stout fellows, seized the strangers' bridles and forced the horses back toward the road.

"Ye'd better be gettin' on!" admonished mine host, grinning but decisive. "Ye don't rightly understand us here, I calculate! Better get on now, for convenience!"

The hors.e.m.e.n seemed to have forgotten their wrath in their astonishment.

"Are you all Tories, too?" they found voice to demand.

"We're as good patriots as ever you be!" rejoined mine host, crisply.

"But if we've got any Tories among us they're our own, and we'll see about 'em ourselves, our own way. Now clear out!" And he hit the nigh horse a smart slap on the rump, making him bound forward.

By this time the leader and spokesman of the twain had recovered his full head of anger. He had no quixotic notion of undertaking to discipline Second Westings village. But he conceived a very clear purpose. Reining his excited horse down violently, he shook his fist at the crowd, and shouted:

"If you choose to harbour a dirty Tory, there be men and patriots in the other townships who'll come right soon an' teach you yer duty!"

"Oh, you clear out!" jeered the Second Westings men.

That evening, at Westings House, while the beginnings of a bleak March wind storm bl.u.s.tered and whimpered outside, Mistress Mehitable brewed a hot posset of uncommonly cheering quality. The cheer was needed; for all felt that a crisis of some sort, or some grave change, was at hand.

Doctor John, who had quite recovered, tried in vain to make his fooling sound spontaneous. The grave eyes of Destiny would persist in looking out through the jester's-mask. At length Doctor Jim exclaimed, abruptly:

"I must go, now! I must take Amos and slip away in the night, and go wherever men are gathering to fight for the king. I'm not needed here now, John, since you are back to take care of Mehitable and Barbara!"

It was what all had been waiting for, but it came with a shock--the shock of conviction, not of surprise--to all. Mistress Mehitable turned ghost pale, and unconsciously her hand went to her heart.

Doctor John noticed the action, with sad eyes that belied the humour of his mouth. Barbara sprang up, rushed over to Doctor Jim, and flung her arms around his neck.

"_Please_ don't go, Doctor Jim!" she pleaded. "This is the place for you. And here we all love you so we don't care _what_ side you're on.

And as for going to fight for your side,--of course, you want to, we all know that,--but you _never_ can get through to the coast. You can never get through our people. No, you can't, Doctor Jim! You must stay here with us. Help me hold him, Aunt Hitty!"

"Jim," said Doctor John, his voice trembling with earnestness, "I appeal to you to stay. Don't break our hearts by going. Stay for our sakes. I know, brother, how you feel,--and believing as you do, I don't blame you,--I'll never blame you. But _Barbara is right_. _You can't get through_. You can stay with a clear conscience!"

Mistress Mehitable, since becoming a.s.sured of the att.i.tude of the Second Westings men, had lost all her dread of having him stay, and gained a quivering fear of having him go. Forgetful of all else, she now laid her slim hand on his, looked at him with her whole soul in her eyes, and said:

"_Must_ you? Oh, Jim, are you so sure you ought to go?"

A faint spasm pa.s.sed over Doctor John's face--Barbara alone observing it--and seemed to leave it older and sterner. He opened his mouth to speak, but Doctor Jim was ahead of him.

"Yes, I know my duty. If a man sees it, he's got to do it,--eh, what, dearest lady in the world? I wish I didn't see it so plain. Then I might stay here with you all, you whom I love. But I see my duty, to fight for the king, just as plain as you saw yours, John, to fight for your d.a.m.ned old Congress!"

"I'm not going to fight any more!" interrupted Doctor John, speciously.

Doctor Jim laughed, tenderly derisive.

"No, but you're sending, and equipping, and supporting two able-bodied subst.i.tutes, aren't you? But another point is, my Barbara,--by staying I should bring disaster on you all. The good folk of Second Westings--and they _are_ good folk, though rebels, alas!--will never stand by and see the Ladds and Pigeons, whatever their views, molested by an outside world. When your fiery patriots from up the river come to ride me on a rail, Second Westings will stand in the way and get its honest head broken. _You_ wouldn't do it, John Pigeon! You'd cut off your head, before you'd let the poor souls get their heads broken for you in a cause that they believe all wrong. I'd be a coward to let them, John. Would you ask me to be a coward?"

"Wouldn't be much use asking," growled Doctor John. "But you're all wrong, as usual, Jim!" Then he turned suddenly to Mistress Mehitable, with a meaning look.

"You speak, Mehitable! You _make_ him stay. Demand it of him--as your right! Keep him!"

Doctor Jim searched his brother's face, first with terrible question, then with the growing light of a great joy. Barbara watched breathless, forgetful of the fate of dynasties. Here, she felt, were problems that had held long lives in doubt, now working to instant solution. Mistress Mehitable turned scarlet, and she, too, questioned the sombre, tender eyes of Doctor John. But she said, quite simply:

"I'm afraid, John, if he thinks he ought to go he'll go. But I do ask you to stay, Jim."

"_Don't_, Mehitable!" groaned Doctor Jim.

"There, what did I tell you, John?" she said.

But now certain things, uncertain all his life till now, were quite clear to Doctor John. Slowly, as if it hurt him, he got up. He went over to where Mehitable was sitting, quite close to Doctor Jim. He laid a hand on each, caressingly,--and to Mehitable that touch, suddenly grown bold and firm, was a renunciation. He had never touched her that way before.

"It is all right, Jim! It is all right, Mehitable!" said he, in a very low but quite steady voice. "I never was sure till now,--but I ought to have understood,--for I see now it was always _yours_, Jim. Forgive me, brother. I ought not to have stood in the way."

"John!" cried Doctor Jim, catching the caressing hand in a fervent clasp. "G.o.d bless you! But--on my honour I have never said a word!"

"I know, Jim, I know. We've always played fair to each other. But now you can speak. And now,--you don't need to speak, either of you. Your faces speak plain enough, to the eyes of one who loves you both!"

"Is it true, Mehitable? After all these years that I've kept silence,--oh, is it true?" asked Doctor Jim, scarcely above a whisper, reaching out his hands to her longingly.

For one instant she laid hers in his. Then she withdrew them quickly, seized Doctor John's hand in both of hers, laid her cheek against it, and burst into tears.

"Oh, John, dear John," she sobbed. "How can I bear that you should be unhappy?"

Doctor John blinked, and made a little noise in his throat. Then, with a brave levity, he exclaimed:

"Tut! Tut! Don't you worry about me, either of you, now. As for you, Jim Pigeon, you Tory scoundrel, I'm getting the best of you, after all.

For I stay right here and take care of her, Lord knows how long, while you go off, Lord knows where, and get yourself poked full of holes for your old King George-- Eh, what, baggage? as Jim would say!" And he turned unexpectedly toward Barbara, who had been standing by the window, and peering diligently out into the blackness for the past ten minutes,--and surrept.i.tiously wiping her eyes as well as her nose.

"Yes, indeed you _do_ get the best of the bargain," she cheerfully and mendaciously agreed.

Two days later, in the dark before moonrise, Doctor Jim and Amos slipped away on horseback by the road to Westings Landing. And Doctor John went with them as far as the Landing, to put them into trusty hands for their night voyage down the river.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

A few days after Doctor Jim's going, came the news that Washington had entered Boston, the troops of the king having given up the defence and sailed away to Halifax. Soon afterward there was bustle in Second Westings, and camp talk, and military swagger; for a portion of the army was moving down to New York, and many men had leave to visit their homes in pa.s.sing; and some, who had enlisted for a short service, had come home to get in the crops before reenlisting; and some, grudging souls, had come home to stay, saying that it was now the time for others to sweat and bleed for their country.

Amid all this excitement, which had some effect even upon Mistress Mehitable, antagonistic though she was to it, the palely brilliant Connecticut spring rushed over the land with promise. Never before, it seemed, did the vanguards of the song-sparrows and thrushes so crowd the blowing thickets with melody; never before the bright hordes of the dandelions so suddenly and so goldenly over-flood the meadows. But to Barbara the iridescent glory was somehow more sad than gloom. The fact that her cause was everywhere prospering, that success had fallen to the Continental arms beyond anything that she had dared to hope, brought her no elation. She felt the sorrow that had come into Doctor John's life in spite of the big, whimsical gaiety with which he kept it covered up. She felt the fierce tugging at Mistress Mehitable's heart-strings, though that thoroughbred little lady never revealed, save by the dark eye-shadows of sleepless nights, the pangs it cost her to be deprived in a day of the lover whom she had been half a lifetime in finding out. Barbara felt, too, the absence of Doctor Jim, who seemed to her so big and boyish and reckless and unfit to take care of himself that he could not fail to get into trouble if not kept at home and mothered by small women like herself and Aunt Hitty. And most of all she felt the crushing uncertainty as to Robert.

When summer was approaching high tide, Second Westings grew quiet again, the soldiers being all called back to their colours to make ready the defences of New York. Then, by hard-riding express messengers, the tidings flew over the country that Congress at Philadelphia, on the fourth day of July, had declared independence, and set up a republic to be known as the "United States of America."

Second Westings went wild with enthusiasm, and that night there was a terrific consumption of old tar barrels and dry brush. And there was a select little dinner at Squire Gillig's, to which Barbara and Doctor John felt in duty bound to go,--and from which Mistress Mehitable, with an equal devotion to duty, stayed away. She had taken the news gracefully enough, however, merely suggesting to Barbara and Doctor John that possibly all the rejoicing might turn out to be a little premature.

Thereafter it seemed to Barbara that events moved furiously, one piece of vital news following close upon the heels of its predecessor. Early in August came word that a great English army for the capture of New York was landing at Staten Island. Then, the first tidings of Robert,--reaching Barbara in a letter from her uncle, whose regiment was holding Brooklyn. Glenowen wrote that from certain neutrals, country-folk of Long Island, who had no party but their cabbage-patch, he had learned of both Robert Gault and Doctor Jim. Doctor Jim, as representing one of the oldest and most distinguished families of Connecticut, and himself widely known, had been attached to the staff of the English general, Sir William Howe, while Robert Gault, with the rank of captain, was in command of a troop of irregular Loyalist Horse.

With the unspeakable relief that these tidings brought her, Barbara regained for a few days her old vivacity, imperiousness, and daring.

She tore about the country wildly as of old, on horseback,--no longer, as a rule, on Black Prince, who had grown too sedate to fully fall in with her caprices, but on a fiery young sorrel which she had bought for herself, choosing it partly for its own qualities, and partly for its resemblance to Robert's old Narragansett pacer. She resumed her canoeing on the lake. She sang again her old plantation songs, to Doctor John's accompaniment and Mistress Mehitable's diversion. She put a new and gayer ribbon on the neck of the furry "Mr. Grim." She even remembered that the bergamot was in flower, and set herself with interest to the distilling of her half-forgotten "Water of Maryland Memories," laughing indulgently the while at the girlishly sentimental name of it. Meantime she was conscious of a curiously divided interest in the war,--conscious that her interest was divided in a fashion that would, a year ago, have seemed to her wicked and impossible. Just as pa.s.sionately as ever was her heart set upon the triumph of her cause.

But she felt an irrational desire that Robert and Doctor Jim should win each a splendid victory on his own account. She was full of pity that they should be on what she held the surely losing side, and she wanted some measure of glory to be theirs.

But the next news that came dashed her spirits. It told of the battle of Long Island, and the defeat of the Continentals by the ordered British lines. It told of the panic flight of patriot regiments. It told of General Washington's retreat from Long Island and entrenching of the army at New York. A few days later came a letter to Barbara from Glenowen,--whose regiment had stood firm and suffered heavily,--in which he said that he did not think it would be possible to hold New York with the troops at Washington's command, and that there would doubtless soon be a further retreat to some position beyond the Harlem.