Barbara Ladd

Barbara, meanwhile, and Mistress Mehitable, and Doctor John, had their heads close together over the intricate and beautiful embroidery, admiring each fine detail in careful succession.

"It is perfectly beautiful!" pronounced Barbara, at length, with a deep breath of satisfaction and a consciousness of duty loyally done. There were several of her own presents which she admired more fervently, and she already had five, with the possibility of more yet to come from Uncle Bob's wonderful bag. But she felt it would not be playing fair if she failed to give full measure of time and fervour to sympathising with Aunt Hitty in her good fortune. At the same time, she felt that in her aunt's frank delight in such a frivolous and quite unnecessarily beautiful garment she had found a new bond of understanding with that long-misunderstood lady.

But Mistress Mehitable had yet one more word to say before she was ready, in turn, to give undivided attention to Barbara's fortunes.

"I am going to confess, Mr. Glenowen," said she, with a smiling, half-shamefaced glance, as she held up the dainty creation of lawn and lace and silk, caressing her smooth pink and white cheek with it, "I am going to confess that this lovely garment is just such a thing as I have longed to have, yet should have considered it wicked self-indulgence to purchase. Even so sober and prosy a dame as I may dearly love the uselessly beautiful. I'm beginning to doubt whether I really want to be quite so useful and competent as I am thought to be. You, Mr. Glenowen, a comparative stranger, and with but a casual, courteous regard for me, have read my heart as these my dearest and lifelong friends, who would, I believe, give their right hands to serve me, could not do."

"Glenowen, you die to-night!" roared Doctor Jim, knitting his great brows.

But Doctor John was on one knee at Mistress Mehitable's black-satin-shod small feet, one hand upon his breast.

"Nothing more utilitarian than silk stockings, most dear and unexpectedly frivolous lady," he vowed, "shall be my tributes of devotion to you henceforth!"

"And mine shall be garters, fickle Mehitable!" cried Doctor Jim, dropping on his knee beside Doctor John, and swearing with like solemnity. "Silk garters, – and such buckles for silk garters!"

"And little silk shoes, and such big buckles for little silk shoes!" said Doctor John.

"And silk petticoats!" went on Doctor Jim, antiphonally. "Brocaded silk, flowered silk, watered silk, painted silk, corded silk, tabby silk, paduasoy silk, alamode silk, taffety silk, charrydarry – " till Mistress Mehitable put her hand over his mouth and stopped the stream of his eruditions.

"And silk – and silk – " broke in Doctor John, once more, but stammeringly, because his knowledge of the feminine wardrobe was failing him. "Tut, tut, silk night-rails, indeed! The scoundrel! The vagabond Welshman! May I die of Jim Pigeon's physic if I don't make shift – make silk shift – "

"John!" cried Mistress Mehitable, in tone of rebuke, and pushing them both away from her. "Get up at once, both of you, and don't be so silly!"

Her eyes shone, and her cheeks were flushed with mingled pleasure and embarrassment, and Glenowen realised that she was much younger and prettier than he had been wont to think.

"O Mehitable-demoralised-by-Barbara!" vowed Doctor John, towering over her. "Your sweet and now perverted soul shall be satisfied with gewgaws! I, John Pigeon, swear it!"

"Then I want a bosom-bottle, of Venice glass and gold filigree, to keep my nosegays from withering!" retorted Mistress Mehitable, flashing up at him a look of her blue eyes. "I've never had such a chance as this in all my life!"

"There now, hussy!" growled Doctor Jim, turning upon Barbara. "See what you have done. In three days you have demoralised her completely. And I see the ruin of John and Jim Pigeon, buying her things!"

But Barbara was by this time too absorbed in her own things to heed the catastrophe thus impending. It was plain that Uncle Bob had been prosperous these past two years, – and equally plain that he was in full sympathy with Barbara's tastes. First of all, there were books, – a handsomely bound copy of Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia," an old, time-stained copy of "England's Helicon," a copy in boards of the admired "Odes" of Mr. Gray, and a copy of Mr. Thompson's "The Castle of Indolence." With these, in strange companionship, a white silk mask, – a black velvet mask with silver buttons on silver cord behind the mouth, to enable the wearer to hold it in place with her lips, when both hands might chance to be occupied, – and a small pistol, inlaid with silver and mother-of-pearl. This seductive little weapon Barbara hugged rapturously to her breast. Though she would not kill anything for the world, she loved to feel she could be slaughterous an she wished!

Then came wonders of the wardrobe. Barbara hungered to try them on all at once, and in truth made marvellous efforts toward that unachievable end. There were kerchiefs of sheerest lawn and lace, and of embroidered silk. There were two pairs of silk garters, three pairs of silk stockings, and six pairs of fine thread stockings. She loved the silk stockings as she did the pistol and Sir Philip Sidney. There were shoes, low, shapely, thin-soled shoes of red morocco, and black chamois, and black satin, and a pair of daintiest slippers of white satin, all with buckles satisfyingly resplendent.

"I knew your feet would never be any larger than they are now," explained Uncle Bob, "so having the opportunity to get some uncommon fine shoes at a price uncommon reasonable, I thought it just as well to embrace occasion boldly!"

"But how did you ever guess the right size, Uncle Bob?" cried Barbara, in ecstasy, trying on a black satin one with supreme forgetfulness of company manners, and poking out ingenuously the most bewitching foot in the thirteen colonies. "Do just look. It fits like a glove!"

Stooping quickly as if to examine it, Doctor Jim engulfed it in one large, white hand; and kissed it just above the glittering buckle.

"There, Bob Glenowen," he growled, as he straightened himself, "is that the proper civility to show a lady when she pokes out her foot at you? I suppose you would pocket the shoe and carry off the lady! Eh, what?"

"How dare you kiss my niece without my leave?" demanded Mr. Glenowen.

"He shall kiss me just whenever he likes, and no one in the world shall interfere!" declared Barbara, springing up, and pulling Doctor Jim's neck down to be swiftly hugged. "But – how did you know the right size, Uncle Bob?"

A look passed between Mistress Mehitable and Glenowen; and Barbara, intercepting it, understood in a flash.

"Oh! Oh! Aunt Hitty! You did it!" she shrieked, clapping her hands. "You sent him my green silk slipper for a pattern! And I've been thinking I had lost it! And I was ashamed to tell you! Oh, how dear, and deceitful of you, honey!"

"Here, indeed, is the delinquent slipper!" acknowledged Uncle Bob, drawing the green silk toy from his bag. He handed it over to Mistress Mehitable, for Barbara was again absorbed, her glowing face, with one massive black curl hanging straight past her cheek, bent low over her spoils, among which were lengths of silk, – a rich brocade, a taffeta, and a silk Damascus, out of which her quick fancy conjured up a dream of petticoats, panniers, and bodices that should appear most sumptuously grown-up. There were gloves, too, and mitts; and a mighty handsome little "equipage" of silver-gilt, containing scissors, thimble, nail-trimmer, tweezers, and such small needments, to hang at the left side of her bodice. There was a flimsy affair of a "lovehood," silk and gauze and mystery, from which Barbara's vivid, petulant, dark little face flashed forth with indescribable bewitchment. This love-hood, swore Doctor John, should never be worn by Barbara on the streets of Second Westings, for reasons affecting the public weal, as it would bedevil the Reverend Jonathan Sawyer himself in the very sanctuary of his pulpit. Barbara suddenly looked forward with interest to going to meeting on the following Sunday, bedecked in the disastrous love-hood.

Last, but not least in Barbara's eyes, there was an exceedingly delicate frivolity in the shape of a carven gilt patch-box, about an inch and a half in length. In the top was set a painted china medallion, representing a richly dressed shepherdess enwreathed in roses, with the appropriate posy:

"My love in her attire doth show her wit,It doth so well become her!"

On the inside of the cover was a tiny mirror. When Barbara, silent with delight, peered into this mirror, she caught a vision of herself in a gay ballroom, patched and powdered and furbelowed, shattering the hearts of a host of cavaliers, who every one of them looked like a relative of Robert Gault.

CHAPTER XIX

That night, when she was going to bed, came Barbara's really deep reaction from the exaltation and excitement which had possessed her since the morning with Mistress Mehitable. The joy of her uncle's coming, the whirl of childish delight over the presents he had brought her, 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 the mirror, on her shining mahogany dressing-table. Then she undressed, put on her long, white nightgown, and said her prayers with a troubled alternation of fervour and forgetfulness. She was slipping. Then, one by one, she looked her presents well over again, noted that each was just as perfect as it had seemed to her every other one of the dozen times she had examined it, and wondered with a pang what had become of all their magic. Her scintillant delight in them had faded to a mere dull drab perception of their merits. Her eyes filled, and a lump rose in her throat. She was far over the crest of the pinnacle, on the cold, 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 loss of his two saucer mates, – crept snuggling against her bare ankles and mewed mildly, begging to be noticed. Barbara picked it up, fondled it in her bosom, threw herself down on the bed with it, and burst into a passion of tears. She felt as if she had been long, long away. She was poignantly homesick for her old self, her old childishness. The burden of being grown-up suddenly arose, thrust itself upon her, and grew great and terrifying and not to be borne. She was oppressed, too, with self-reproach. Absorbed in vivid and novel sensations, during the past few eventful days she had not thought as much as usual about her old comrades, – the kittens, Keep, Black Prince, and Mercy Chapman. And now in her weakness she thought they had suffered from her neglect. As a matter of fact, the difference had been purely in her own mind. The kittens, who were quite dependent upon her, had been as tenderly cared for as ever, but while caring for them she had thought of other things more novel and significant. In giving away two of them she had done just what she had planned and promised from the first. But now she scourged herself for heartlessness and inconstancy, pretending she had sent them away just because she was tired of taking care of them and wanted to be free for new interests.

"Did its missis forget all about the poor little lonely baby, and send away her other babies, and get cruel and hard-hearted, just because she thought she was grown-up, and a new friend came along?" she murmured, after the first tempest was over, to the gray and white kitten now purring comfortably against her soft throat. She sat up in bed with it to 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 has been perfectly horrid. But to-morrow she's going to be just her old self again, and take up the tuck in her petticoats, and fix her hair like it was before we ran away. And we'll go to Doctor Jim and Mercy Chapman and just snatch back those other poor babies; and we'll all go off together down into the back garden, by our apple-tree, and have a lovely time. And – and – yes, we will forgive old Debby, and go and see her to-morrow. We'll take Uncle Bob, and then there won't be any bother about explanations."

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

But the long, sweet sleep brought complete renewal to Barbara's spent forces, and waking found her composedly happy, with a blessed sense of problems solved and desired things coming to pass. Her heart was a-brim with sunshine, but the only sunshine in the room was that she held in her heart, for the light that came through the diamond panes was gray, and the sky behind the leafy branch was gray, and, as she looked, the first of the rain came, blown in streaming gusts against the glass, and shedding a narrow line of drops across the polished floor. One leaf of the window was open, and Barbara sprang from bed to shut it, laughing as the cold drops spattered her feet. She had no quarrel with the rain that day, there being enough pleasures indoors to keep any maid's mind busy.

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

"I love the rain," she explained, – "and it's so nice for the complexion, too! I'll go and tell Mercy Chapman about my presents, and take some jellies to her poor sick mother, while you are talking politics in the squire's back office, Uncle Bob. Then I'll meet you at Doctor John's office, and we'll step into Doctor Jim's, and bring both of them up to dinner with us, so we'll all be together as much as possible. Won't we, dear?" And she paused in the task of strapping on her goloshes, to appeal to Mistress Mehitable.

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

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

Toward sunset the rain stopped, and a copper flame was reflected up from the windows of a cottage visible to the eastward through the trees; and the western sky, opening along the horizon under great smoky-purple battlements of cloud, revealed unspeakable glories of clear gold. Throughout the rare hour, till dusk fell, the thrushes sang ecstatically, so unusual an outburst that Barbara dragged every one out upon the wet porch to listen to the thrilling, cloistral-pure cadences, the infinite tranquillities of tone. So inspiring was that hour in the front of twilight that even the catbird down in the back garden forgot that he had been for days too busy to sing, and mounted the topmost bough of a tall cherry, and eased his soul in a chaos of golden phrases.

Very early the next morning, – the kind of morning when the sunlight itself seems as if it were just sparkling from a bath in cold fountains, – Barbara and Glenowen started out for a paddle across the lake to visit old Debby. They went through the barn-yard, through the bars, through the pasture, and through the wood; and in response to his bounding and wagging appeals, they took Keep, the mastiff, with them. They went early, in order to be back in time for the dinner with Doctor John and Doctor Jim. And Barbara insisted on letting Keep go in the canoe, that she might erase from his generous heart the memory of her harshness on the morning of her great adventure. At her command, the dog 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 the shore instead of straight out across the lake. "I wonder you ever had the heart to leave him behind, – and to take those kittens, who couldn't tell a canoe from a horse-trough."

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

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

"I want to examine a certain big rock, where a certain small girl did certain 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 low voice. "Don't let's go there!"

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

"No!" she said. "Let's go close to the rock, and look right down into the 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 they looked a huge eel wriggled over it. Barbara shuddered, and seized her paddle 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 come to me if you had known, Uncle Bob!"

"Poor little girlie!" murmured Glenowen, his kind brown eyes moistening at 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 fleetly out across the water, away from the sorrowful spot. "It's all so different now! And it's always going to be different!"

Glenowen smiled to himself, as he was apt to do when confronted with any of the pathetic ironies of life. Barbara would not have liked him to smile, for to her a smile meant amusement or mirth, and she could never learn to appreciate the depth of tenderness that might lurk beneath a ripple of laughter. But she was looking straight ahead. In his heart and behind his smile, Glenowen said, "Child, dear child, is it all so securely different now, and just eight days gone since you climbed out of your window before daybreak?" But aloud he said, after a silence:

"It is indeed most different, Barb, old girl? Some of your troubles are really done now, thrown into the dark corner with the discarded dollies. The others will keep bobbing up now and then, claiming old acquaintance. But just you cut them dead. They are in sober truth not the same, now that you are older and more responsible. Well I know, what so many forget, that childish sorrows, while they last, are the most bitter and hopeless of sorrows. The wall that a man steps over blots out a child's view of heaven."

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

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

"There goes my old blue heron!" shouted Barbara, gleefully. "You should 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 besides frogs!" said Glenowen.

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

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

Mrs. Debby Blue was spinning flax, on the hard-beaten clean earth some paces in front of her threshold, when she saw and recognised her approaching visitors. In the presence of Mr. Glenowen she read peace, for her shrewd perception of Barbara's character told her that the girl would never have permitted her a glimpse of the cherished uncle except as a sign of favour. Nevertheless the grim old woman was conscious of a sinking qualm at thought of the first straight look of Barbara's eyes. She knew she had betrayed her; and that knowledge was not wholly mended by the fact that she knew she had done right to betray. Her lonely old heart so yearned to the child that she feared her reproach as she feared no other thing in life. She stopped her wheel, dropped her roll of flax, picked up her stick, and limped sturdily down toward the landing.

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

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

"This does my old eyes good, Miss Barby!" exclaimed the old woman, her voice 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'd have 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 things might have happened to me if it hadn't been for you!"

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

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

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

As Barbara stopped breathless, Glenowen came up and grasped the old dame 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 she led them into her cabin for refreshment. She was a cunning cook, if somewhat unconventional in her recipes, and she remembered with satisfaction that Barbara's uncle had seemed to share Barbara's weakness for her concoctions. Eight days ago she would have offered Barbara milk to drink; but now she brought out only a strong root wine for which she was famous, a beverage which was extolled throughout the township as a most efficacious preventative of all disorders.