Barbara Ladd Part 7

Richard's son!-- And his heart's in the right place,--and his head, too,--eh, what? We'll see that Mistress Mehitable is not too hard on him,--eh, what? You know you're not going to be too hard on the boy yourself, John Pigeon, for all you've been so uncommonly unpleasant to him!"

Doctor John chuckled softly, and squeezed Barbara's left hand, which he had retained while she was receiving Robert's adieux.

"Tut, tut, Jim! You know well enough we've got to pardon anything in breeches, young or old, that gets led into mischief by this little limb o' darkness here. It's a peck of trouble she's been getting you and me into, time and time again. You needn't make excuses for Robert to me, Jim Pigeon. At least, not yet!"

"Thank you, sir," said Robert, a little stiffly, not relishing a pleasantry at Barbara's expense, though Barbara herself had broken into a peal of gay laughter, flattered at Doctor John's implications, and comforted to know that Robert was not slipping beyond her reach.

"Thank you, indeed, sir; but I have no excuse; I was fully committed to Mistress Barbara's venture, and I'm just as much to blame as she is!"

Barbara's heart glowed. This was the kind of unreasonable championship she adored. But truth compelled her to protest.

"Oh, no, no, Robert, not at all! It wasn't you that ran away from Aunt Hitty, and took the canoe, and persuaded a nice, civil gentleman whom you'd never seen before in your life to do a perfectly crazy thing like you read of in story-books--" But, as she paused for breath, Doctor Jim, too impatient to be amused, interrupted her:

"Well, well, Robert, you and Barbara can settle all that between you some other time. We must get away. Good night--good night. My best compliments to your honoured grandmother! And ride over the first day you can, lad!"

And Doctor John, shaking his head sorrowfully, exclaimed:

"Tut, tut, tut! How small a petticoat can turn how great a brain! I see trouble ahead for you, Bobby!"

"I shall be so glad to see you at my aunt's, Robert!" cried Barbara, over her shoulder, as they moved up the street toward the Blue Boar and the waiting horses. Robert, standing hat in hand, gazed after them till they were swallowed up in the shadows. Still he waited, till a pulse of light across the gloom and the sound of the inn door closing told him that he was alone under the night. Then, suddenly, he became conscious of the lonely, wonderful night sounds, and suddenly the night perfumes sank into his heart. The spicy breaths from the clover field and blossoming thicket, cooled with dew, gave him a strange intoxication as he drew them into the depths of his lungs. The pulsing rhythm of the whippoorwill seemed to time itself to the pulsing of his heart and translate it to the terms of an impa.s.sioned, inarticulate chant. The plucked harp-strings sounding from time to time in the hidden heights of the sky set all his nerves vibrating mystically.

Walking as if in a dream, he came to the door of the cottage where he had planned to stay the night. Then he turned on a swift impulse, hurried back to the landing, launched Barbara's canoe, and, without consciousness of weariness or hunger, paddled all the way back to Gault House against the current.

CHAPTER XI.

From Second Westings that morning, after old Debby's alarm, Doctor John and Doctor Jim had came posthaste on horseback to Westings Landing.

Now, however, it was found that Barbara was quite too worn out by the fatigues of her long, strenuous day to sit a horse for a ten mile's ride over rough roads in the dark. Priding herself not less on her endurance than on her horsemanship, she vehemently repudiated the charge that she was done up, and was determined to ride back on the liveliest of the Blue Boar's horses. But Doctor John and Doctor Jim, scanning critically her white face and the dark rims coming about her eyes, for once agreed in a professional judgment. They ordered the horses. .h.i.tched to the roomy old chaise, which was one of the landlord's most cherished possessions; and Barbara had to accept, rebelliously enough, the supineness of a cushioned seat for the free lift and swing of the saddle. Before the lighted doorway of the inn was out of sight, however, she was glad of the decision. Her overwrought nerves began to relax under the soothing of the wood scents and the tender summer dark.

In a little while she was asleep in the strong curve of Doctor Jim's right arm,--so deep asleep that all the ruts and jolts and corduroy bridges of an old Connecticut back-country road were powerless to disturb her peace. When they woke her up, at her aunt's door, she was so drenched with sleep that she forgot to dread the reckoning. With drowsy, dark eyes, and red mouth softly trustful as a baby's, she bewildered Mistress Ladd by a warm kiss and "I'm sorry, Aunt Hitty!"

and went stumbling off to bed with her basket of sleeping kittens, oblivious and irresponsible as they.

Mistress Mehitable looked after her with small, stern mouth, but troubled eyes. Then she turned half helplessly to her friends, as if to say, "What can I--what ought I to do?"

Doctor John threw up both big, white hands in mock despair, and his sympathetic laugh said, "What do you expect?" But Doctor Jim, more direct and positive, said, "Best leave her alone till to-morrow, Mehitable; and then talk to her with no talk of punishing. She's not the breed that punishing's good for."

Mistress Mehitable looked sorrowful, but resolute.

"I fear that would not be right, Jim!" she said. But there was a note of deep anxiety in her voice. "People who do wrong ought to be punished. Barbara has done very, very wrong!"

Doctor Jim was as near feeling impatient as he could dare to imagine himself with Mistress Mehitable.

"Nonsense--I mean, dear lady, punishment's not in itself one of our numerous unpleasant duties. It's a means to an end, that's all. In this case, it just defeats your end. It's the wrong means altogether.

Therefore--pardon me for saying it to you, Mehitable--it's wrong. It's hard enough to manage Barbara, I know, but to punish her, or talk to her of punishing, makes it harder still, eh, what?"

"Don't let your conscience trouble you, Mehitable," said Doctor John.

"I'm thinking the little maid will manage to get for herself, full measure and running over, all the punishment that's coming to her.

She's not the kind that punishment overlooks."

Was there a suspicion of criticism in all this? Could it be that John Pigeon and Jim Pigeon, her lifelong cavaliers, in whose sight all she did was wont to seem perfection, whose unswerving homage had been her stay through many an hour of faintness and misgiving, were now, at last, beginning to admit doubts? Two large tears gathered slowly in the corners of Mistress Mehitable's blue eyes, the resolution fled from her mouth, and her fine lips quivered girlishly. She twisted her shapely little hands in her ap.r.o.n, then regained her self-control with an effort.

"Dear friends," said she, "I fear I have made a sad failure of the duty which I so confidently undertook. I thought I could surely do so much for her,--could so thoroughly understand Winthrop's child. But that foreign woman--that strange blood! There is the trouble. That is what baffles all my efforts. Oh, perhaps it is partly my fault, too.

Perhaps the child was right in the very singular letter she left for me, saying--just as if she were a grown woman and had the same rights as I had--that the trouble was that we could not understand each other!

Oh, I fear I am not the right woman to have the care of Barbara!"

"You are the rightest woman in the world, Mehitable!" thundered Doctor Jim, in explosive protest against this self-accusation. "The rightest woman in the world to have the care of any man, woman, or child that ever lived."

"Jim Pigeon's right, Mehitable, as he usually is, outside of medicine and politics," declared Doctor John. "The little maid will be ready enough some day, I'll warrant, to acknowledge how lucky she was in having her Aunt Hitty to care for her. But here in Second Westings we are not just at the centre of things exactly, and it may be we get into ruts, thinking our ways are the only ways. Shall we try new ways with this very difficult little maid, Hitty?"

Mistress Mehitable brushed off the tears which had overflowed, and held out a hand to each of the big brothers.

"You are the best friends a woman ever had," she averred with conviction; "and if you both disagree with me, I must be wrong. It shall be your way to the best of my power. After you've had the horses put up, come back here and I'll have a hot bite ready for you.

But--oh, I do wish Winthrop had married among his own people!"

"It is late, dear lady, and you are tired after your anxieties," said Doctor Jim. "But, nevertheless, since you are so gracious, we will soon return,--eh, what, John?--for a bowl of that hot sangaree which Mehitable's fair hands know how to brew so delicately."

"Don't misunderstand Jim, Mehitable," said Doctor John, as the two withdrew. "The comfort of your punch is nothing to us as the comfort of your presence. Had you ever consented to make one man happy, how miserable would you have made others, Mehitable!"

There was deep meaning and an old reproach under Doctor John's tender raillery; and Mistress Ladd's cheeks flushed as she stood a few moments motionless, alone in her low-ceiled, wide parlour. She was convicted of failure at every point. Well she knew how happy she might have made either one of the big-limbed, big-hearted brothers, had she not shrunk from making the other miserable. And she had never been able to decide which was the dearer to her heart; for, though she was apt to turn first to Jim in any need, or any joy, the thought of pain for John was ever hard for her to endure. Her heart was very full as she set about preparing the brew which they both loved: and before they came she stole noiselessly up-stairs to the room over the porch, and softly kissed the dark, unrepentant waves of the sleeping Barbara's hair.

CHAPTER XII.

It was late morning when Barbara awoke--so late that she saw, by the position of the square of sunshine on the wall beyond her bed, that the hour for breakfast was over. Her first vague waking sense was one of joy to come, which she presently caught and fixed as the knowledge that her Uncle Bob would soon be with her. Then a great flood of depression rolled over her, blotting out the joy, as she remembered that she had Aunt Hitty yet to reckon with. To make matters worse, she had slept past breakfast time,--which was almost an immorality in that punctual household. A lump came up in her throat, and tears ached behind her eyes, for she had meant to try so hard to make up,--and now she had gone and sinned again. She shut her eyes tight, and made a determined effort to regain hold of the sleepiness which still drenched and clouded her brain. This effort was too much, and on the instant the last vestige of her drowsiness cleared away, and her brain grew keen as flame. She sat up, determined to face the conflict and get it over.

As she sat up, her eyes fell upon the little table by her bedside, whereon she was wont to keep her candle, her filagreed bottle of lavender water, her much marked copy of Sir Philip Sidney's sonnets, and her Bible, which was thumbed chiefly at Isaiah, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. Her eyes opened very wide as she saw there now,--event unprecedented and unbelievable,--a little tray with white linen napkin. On the tray were a gla.s.s and a jug of milk, a plate of the seed-cakes which she particularly loved, a big slice of barley bread, and a bowl of yellow raspberries. She stared for half a minute, and rubbed her eyes, and thought. Abby, certainly, could not have done it. She would neither have dared nor cared to. Then--it was Aunt Hitty,--and after the way she had treated her,--and after that cold, hateful letter! She reached out a doubtful hand and touched the bread and berries. She started to eat a seed-cake, but it stuck in her throat, quite unable to get past a certain strange, aching obstruction, which had gathered there all at once. Tears suddenly streamed down her face; and springing impulsively out of bed, she ran, barefooted and in her white nightgown, straight to the little bow-windowed sewing-room, where she knew that at this hour her aunt would be busy with the needle.

Mistress Mehitable had just time to thrust aside her needle and the fine fabric she was fashioning before Barbara flung herself into her arms, sobbing pa.s.sionately. The good lady's heart warmed in response to this outburst, and she held Barbara close to her breast, whispering, "There, there, dearie, we just won't talk about it at all! We'll just try hard to understand each other better in the future!"

At the same moment, while her eyes were filling with tears, she could not help a whimsical thought of what Doctor John would say. "He would say,"--she said to herself at the back of her brain,--"'Seed-cakes may save a soul quicker than switchings, Mehitable!'" Mistress Mehitable's earnest mind had no apprehension of humour save as it reached her by reflection from Doctor John or Doctor Jim.

Presently Barbara found her voice.

"Forgive me, Aunt Hitty, forgive me!" she sobbed.

Mistress Mehitable held her a little closer by way of reply.

"I'm not worth your while, Aunt Hitty--I'm not one bit worth all the trouble you take for me--I'm nothing but a wretched little reptile, Aunt Hitty,--and I just wonder you don't hate and despise me!"

"There, there, dear," murmured Mistress Mehitable, patting her hair.

She was sure of her feelings, but could not be quite sure that words would rightly express them at this crisis. If she talked, she knew she might say the wrong thing. She'd leave it all to Barbara, and be safe at least for the moment.

"I knew how bad I was," continued Barbara, justifying the statement by remembrance of some brief and scattered moments of self-questioning.

"I knew how bad I was, but I couldn't say so, and I never, never knew how lovely you could be, Aunt Hitty! I was so dreading to see you this morning,--and then, oh, you just brought me the seed-cakes, and the yellow raspberries, and never said one word!"

As she dwelt on this magnanimity, Barbara's sobs broke forth afresh.

"There, there, dear," murmured Mistress Mehitable again, and kissed her tenderly, still refusing to be drawn from her intrenchments, but deeply rejoicing in the triumph of her new strategy.