Read the book: «Barbara Ladd», page 4

CHAPTER VII

After her breakfast at old Debby's, Barbara urged forward her canoe with keen exhilaration. Now was she really free, really advanced in her great adventure. A load of anxiety was lifted from her mind. She had succeeded in arranging so that the letter would be delivered to her aunt – a matter which had been fretting at her conscience. Moreover, old Debby had shown no surprise or disapproval on hearing of her rash venture. It nettled Barbara, indeed, to have so heroic an enterprise taken so lightly; but she augured therefrom that it was more feasible than she had dared to hope, and already she saw herself installed as mistress of Uncle Bob's home in Stratford.

"He'll love us, my babies!" she cried to the kittens in the basket, and forthwith plied her paddle so feverishly that in a few minutes she had to stop and take breath.

The river at this point wound through low meadows, sparsely treed with the towering, majestic water poplar, sycamore, and arching elm, with here and there a graceful river birch leaning pensively to contemplate its reflection in the stream. The trees and flowers were personal to Barbara, her quick senses differentiating them unerringly. The low meadow, swampy in spots, was a mass of herbs, shrubs, and rank grasses, for the most part now in full flower; and the sun was busy distilling from them all their perfumes, which came to Barbara's nostrils in warm, fitful, varying puffs. She noted the tenderly flushing feathery masses of meadowsweet, which she could never quite forgive for its lack of the perfume promised by its name. From the dry knolls came the heavy scent of the tall, bold umbels of the wild parsnip, at which she sniffed with passing resentment. Another breath of wind, and a turn of the stream into a somewhat less open neighbourhood, brought her a sweet and well-loved savour, and she half rose in her place to greet the presence of a thicket of swamp honeysuckle. She noted, as she went, pale crimson colonies of the swamp rose, hummed over softly by the bees and flies. Purple Jacob's-ladder draped the bushes luxuriantly, with wild clematis in lavish banks, and aerial stretches of the roseate monkey-flower on its almost invisible stems. Her heart went out to a cluster of scented snakemouth under the rim of the bank. She was about to turn her prow shoreward and gather the modest pinkish blossoms for their enchanting fragrance, when she observed leaning above them her mortal enemy among the tree-folk, the virulent poison sumac. She swerved sharply to the other side of the stream to avoid its hostile exhalations.

The little river now widened out and became still more sluggish. A narrow meadow island in mid-stream intoxicated Barbara's eyes with colour, being fringed with rank on rank of purple flag-flower, and its grassy heart flame-spotted with the blooms of the wild lily. The still water along the shores was crowded with floating-heart, and pale-blossomed arrowhead, and blue, rank pickerel-weed; and Barbara, who did not mind the heat, but revelled in the carnival of colour, drew a deep breath and declared to herself (giving the flat lie to ten thousand former assertions of the like intimacy) that the world was a beautiful place to live in. No sooner had she said it than her heart sank under a flood of bitter memories. She seemed once more to feel the water singing in her ears, to see its golden blur filling her eyes, as on that morning when she lay drowning in the lake. The glory of the summer day lost something of its brightness, and she paddled on doggedly, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left.

But this was a mood that could not long hold dominion over Barbara's spirit on this day of days, when she was journeying to freedom. It took no more than the scarlet flash of a tanager across her bow, the flapping of a startled brood of ducks from their covert in the sedge, to lure her back to gladness and the seeing eye. At last the river carried her into quite different surroundings. Still slow, and smooth, and deep, it entered the neighbourhood of great trees growing close, the ancient and unviolated forest. The day grew cool and solemn, the diffused light floating hushed under the great arches of brown and gray and green. By contrast it seemed dark, but the air was of a wonderful transparency, and Barbara's eyes, opening wide in delicious awe, saw everything more distinctly than in the open. She whispered to the yellow birch, the paper birch, the beech, the maple, and the chestnut, each by name lovingly, as she slipped past their soaring trunks, knowing them by the texture and the features of their bark though their leaves hung far overhead. Her paddle dipped without noise, lest the mysteries of the forest conclave should be disturbed by her intrusion. So keen and so initiated were her young eyes that she discerned the sleeping nighthawk on his branch, where his likeness to a knotted excrescence of the bark made him feel secure from the most discriminating vision. Passing a dead pine with a small, neatly rounded hole about ten feet up the trunk, she heard, or thought she heard, the safe conferring of the nest full of young woodpeckers in its hollow depth – which, indeed, was probably but the stirring of her own blood-currents within her over-attentive little ears. Suddenly the vast stillness appeared to close down upon her, not with oppression, but with a calm that was half fearful, half delicious; and it seemed as if the fever of her veins was being slowly drawn away. The mystic shores slipped by with speed, though she hardly knew she was paddling. And when, suddenly, a great brown owl dropped from a beech limb and went winnowing soundlessly down the stream ahead of her, she caught her breath, feeling as if the soul of the silence had taken palpable shape before her eyes.

Now, as it seemed to Barbara, life and movement began to appear, at the summons of those shadowy wings. A little troop of pale-winged moths drifted, circling lightly, over the stream; and a fly-catcher, with thin, cheeping cries, dropped some twenty feet straight downward from an overhanging limb, fluttered and zigzagged for a moment in mid-air, capturing some small insect darters which Barbara could not see, then shot back into the leafage. Then upon a massive, sloping maple-branch close to the bank, she saw a stocky black-and-white shape slowly crawling. The head was small and flattened, the bright little eyes glittered upon her in defiance, and a formidable ridge of pointed quills erected itself angrily along the back. The animal uttered a low, squeaking grunt, and Barbara, with prompt discretion, steered as close as possible to the opposite bank, glancing apprehensively over her shoulder as she passed. She was strongly inclined to like the porcupine; but his ill-temper was manifest, and she had faith in the superstition that he could shoot his needle-like quills to a distance and pierce the object of his dislike. Barbara could not contemplate the possibility of appearing before her uncle like a pin-cushion, stuck full of porcupine quills.

Barely had she left the resentful porcupine behind, safely out of quill-flinging distance, when she observed a small, ruddy head cleaving the water in mid-channel. A pair of prominent eyes met hers apprehensively. Two smooth ripples curved away from the throat of the small swimmer. It was a red squirrel whom unwonted affairs had summoned to the other side of the river. Whatever the affairs, Barbara was determined to expedite them as far as she could. Overtaking the swimmer with a couple of smart strokes, she politely held out to him the blade of the paddle. The invitation was not to be resisted. With a scramble and a leap he came aboard, skipped along the gunwale, and perched himself, jaunty and chipper for all his bedragglement of tail, on the extreme tip of the bow. There he twitched and chattered eagerly, while Barbara headed toward the shore where he would be. While he was yet a wide space distant from it, he sprang into the air. Barbara held her breath – but the little traveller knew his powers. He landed safely on a projecting root, flicked off behind a tree, and was gone. In a few seconds there came echoing from a tree-top far back in the shadows a loud, shrill chattering, which Barbara took for an expression of either gratitude or impudence. Caring not which it was, she smiled indulgently and paddled on.

And now to her sensitive nostrils there came suddenly an elusive wafture of wintergreen, and she looked around for the gray birch whose message she recognised. The homely, familiar smell reclaimed her from her mood of exaltation, and she realised that she was hungry. Just ahead was a grassy glade, whereinto the sun streamed broadly. She saw that it was far past noon. With a leap of the heart she realised that she must be nearing the point where the stream would join the great river which was to bear her, her kittens, and her fortunes, down to the sea and Uncle Bob. Yes, she recognised this same open glade, with the giant willow projecting over the water at its farther end. She and Uncle Bob had both remarked upon its fairy beauty as they passed it going and coming, when they had explored the stream. She had but two or three miles farther to go, and her paddle would greet the waters of the great river. This was fitting place to halt and renew her strength.

Pulling up the prow of the canoe upon a tuft of sedge, she took out the basket and the bundle. From the heart of the bundle she drew a small leather bag, containing barley cakes, gingerbread, a tiny parcel of cold meat done up in oiled paper, a wooden saucer, and a little wooden bottle which she had filled with fresh milk at old Debby's. Having poured some of the milk into the saucer, and laid three or four shreds of the meat around its edges, she released the kittens from their basket. For two or three minutes, glad of freedom, the fat, furry things frisked and stretched and tumbled hither and thither, while Barbara kept watch upon them with solicitous eyes. But soon they grew afraid of the great spaces and the woods, being accustomed to an environment more straitened. They came back mewing to Barbara's feet, and she turned their attention to their dinner. While they lapped the milk, and daintily chewed the unaccustomed meat, she dined heartily but abstractedly on the barley cakes and gingerbread. Then, having satisfied her thirst by lying flat on the wet, grassy brink of the stream and lowering her lips to the water, she decided to rest a few minutes before resuming her voyage. Close by was a beech-tree, around whose trunk the moss looked tempting. Seating herself with her back against the tree, and the kittens curled up in her lap, she looked out dreamily over the hot grasses – and presently fell asleep.

She had slept perhaps half an hour when a crow, alighting on a low branch some half score paces distant, peered into the shade of the beech-tree and discovered the sweet picture. To him it was not sweet in the least, but indubitably interesting. "Cah – ah!" he exclaimed loudly, hopping up and down in his astonishment. The sharp voice awoke Barbara, and she rubbed her eyes.

"Gracious!" she exclaimed to the kittens, "what sleepyheads we are! Come, come, we must hurry up, or we'll never get to Uncle Bob!"

Before she was really well awake, the kittens were in the basket, the canoe was loaded and shoved off, and the adventurers were once more afloat upon their quest. Then only did Barbara give herself time to stretch and rub her eyes. After a few strokes she let the canoe drift with the current, while she laid down the paddle, and cooled her wrists and refreshed her face with handfuls of water.

As she straightened her brave little shoulders again to her labour, she was arrested by a strange sound as of the ripping of bark. It was an ominous kind of noise in the lonely stillness, and apprehensively she peered in the direction whence it came. Then she grew afraid. On the other shore, about a couple of rods back from the water, she saw a large black bear sitting upon its haunches beside a fallen and rotten tree. As she stared, wide-eyed and trembling, he lifted his great paw and laid hold of the dead bark. Again came the ripping, tearing noise, and off peeled a huge brown slab. To the exposed surface he applied a nimble tongue – and Barbara's terror subsided. She saw that he was quite too absorbed in the delights of an ant-log to pay any attention to a mere girl; and she remembered, too, that the black bear was a rather inoffensive soul so long as he was not treated contumeliously. For all this, however, she made as much haste from the spot as was consistent with a noiseless paddle – and kept furtive watch over her shoulder until she had put a good half-mile between the canoe and the ant-log.

By the time her concern about the bear had begun to flag she found that the current was quickening its pace. The trees slipped by more swiftly, and the shores grew bolder. A mellow, roaring clamour came to her ears, and with delicious trepidation she remembered a little rapid through which she must pass. Around a turn of the stream it came into view, its small waves sparkling where the forest gave back and admitted the afternoon sun. Her experience in running rapids had been slight, but she remembered the course which Uncle Bob had taken, between two large rocks where the water ran deep and smooth; and she called to mind, the further to brace her confidence, that Uncle Bob had stigmatised this particular rapid as mere child's play. Her heart beat rather wildly as she entered the broken water, and the currents gripped her, and the banks began to flee upward past her view. But her eye held true and her wrist firm. The clamour filled her ears, but she laid her course with precision and fetched the very centre of the channel between the big rocks. From that point all was clear. The canoe went racing through the last ripple, which splashed her lightly as she passed; and in a reach of quiet water, foam-flecked and shining, she drew a deep breath of triumph. This, indeed, was to live. Never had she experienced a keener consciousness of power. She felt her enterprise already successful. The ancient woods, with their bears, their porcupines, their wide-winged brown owls, lay behind her. Second Westings was incalculably far away. There in plain view, rising over its comfortable orchard trees, not half a mile distant, were the roofs and chimneys of Gault House, overlooking, as she had heard, the waters of the great river. And beyond the next turn, as she thought with a thrill, she would see the great river itself.

CHAPTER VIII

Barbara rounded the next turn. There before her, widely gleaming, spread the waters of the great river itself. She cried out in her joy, and paddled madly – then paused, abashed, perceiving that she was the object of a critical but frankly admiring scrutiny. Her attention was diverted from the great river. Here was a tall boy – of her own caste unmistakably – poling himself out on a precarious little raft to meet her. Her flush of confusion passed as quickly as it had come, and laying her paddle across the gunwale, she waited with interest to discover what he might have to say.

Barbara had met but few boys of her own class, and those few had seemed, under her merciless analysis, uniformly uninteresting. Their salient characteristics, to her mind, were freckles, rudeness, ignorance, and a disposition to tease cats. But this youth was obviously different. Apparently about seventeen years of age, he was tall and graceful, and the way the clumsy log-raft on which he stood surged forward under the thrusts of his pole revealed his strength. Barbara loved strength, so long as delicacy saved it from coarseness. The boy was in his shirt sleeves, which were of spotless cambric, and Barbara noted, with approbation, the ample ruffles turned back, for convenience, from his sinewy brown hands. She observed that his brown, long-fronted, flowered vest was of silk, and his lighter brown small-clothes of a fine cloth worn only by the gentry; that his stockings were of black silk, and his shoes, drenched most of the time in the water that lapped over the raft, were adorned with large buckles of silver. She admired the formal fashion in which his black hair was tied back in a small and very precise queue. But most of all she liked his face, which was even darker than her own – lean, somewhat square in the jaw, with a broad forehead, and gray-blue, thoughtful eyes, set wide apart.

Now, Barbara's fearless scorn of conventions was equalled only by her ignorance of them. This boy pleased her, so why should she hesitate to show it? When the raft ranged up alongside the canoe, she laid hold upon it for anchorage and the greater convenience in conversation, and flashed upon the stranger the full dazzle of her scarlet lips, white teeth, and bewildering radiance of green eyes. The boy straightened himself from the pole in order to bow with the more ceremony – which he accomplished to Barbara's complete satisfaction in spite of the unsteadiness of the raft.

"What a nice-looking boy you are!" she said, frankly condescending. "What is your name?"

"Robert Gault, your very humble servant!" he replied, bowing again, and smiling. The smile was altogether to Barbara's fancy, and showed even, strong, white teeth, another most uncommon merit in a boy. "And I am sure," he went on, "that this is Mistress Barbara Ladd whom I have the honour to address."

"Why, how do you know me?" exclaimed Barbara, highly pleased. Then, quickly apprehensive, she added, "What makes you think I am Barbara Ladd?"

The boy noted the change in her countenance, and wondered at it. But he replied at once:

"Of course the name of Mistress Barbara Ladd, and her daring, and her canoe-craft, and her beauty" (this he added out of his own instant conviction), "have spread far down the river. When I came up here the other day to visit my grandmother" (he indicated slightly the distant roofs of Gault House), "I came with a great hope of being permitted to meet you!"

Evidently he knew nothing of her flight. Her uneasiness vanished. But she had never had a compliment before – a personal compliment, such as is dear to every wise feminine heart – and that word "beauty" was most melodious to her ears. As a matter of fact, she did not herself admire her own appearance at all, and even had an aversion to the mirror – but it occurred to her now, for the first time, that this was a point upon which it was not needful that every one should agree with her. It was practically her first real lesson in tolerance toward an opinion that differed from her own.

"I'll warrant you heard no good of that same Barbara Ladd, more's the pity!" she answered, coquettishly tossing her dark little head and shooting at him a distracting sidelong glance from narrowed lids. "Anyhow, if you are Lady Gault's grandson, I am most happy to meet you."

She stretched out to him her brown little hand, just now none too immaculate, indeed, but with breeding stamped on every slim line of it, and eloquent from the polished, well-trimmed, long, oval nails. Instantly, careless of the water and his fine cloth breeches, Robert went down upon one knee and gallantly kissed the proffered hand.

Barbara was just at an age when, for girls with Southern blood in their veins, womanhood and childhood lie so close entwined in their personalities that it is impossible to disentangle the golden and the silver threads. Never before had any one kissed her hand. She was surprised at the pleasant thrill it gave her; and she was surprised, too, at her sudden, inexplicable impulse to draw the hand away. It was a silly impulse, she told herself; so she controlled it, and accepted the kiss with the composure of a damsel well used to such ceremonious homage. But she did not like such a nice boy to be kneeling in the water.

"Why did you come out on that rickety thing?" she asked. "Why haven't you a boat or a canoe?"

"This was the only thing within reach," he explained, respectfully relinquishing her hand. "I saw you coming; and I knew it must be you, because no other girl could handle a canoe so beautifully; and I was afraid of losing you if I waited."

"That was civil of you. But aren't you getting very wet there? Won't you come into the canoe?"

"Really?" he exclaimed, lifting his chin with a quick gesture of eagerness. "Are you going to be so good to me? Then I must push this old raft ashore first and secure it. I don't know whom it belongs to."

As he poled to land in too much haste for any further conversation, Barbara paddled silently alongside and admired his skill. When the raft was tied up, and the pole tossed into the bushes, he took his place in the bow and knelt so as to face her.

"You must turn the other way," laughed Barbara.

"No, I was proposing, by your leave, to make this the stern, and ask you to let me paddle," he answered. "Won't you let me? You really look a little bit tired, and I want you to talk to me, if you will be so condescending. How can I turn my back to you?"

"I am not the least, leastest bit tired," protested Barbara, a little doubtfully. "But I don't mind letting you paddle for awhile, if you'll paddle hard and go the way I want you to." And with that she seated herself flat on the bottom of the canoe, with an air of relief that rather contradicted her protestation.

The boy laughed, as he turned the canoe with powerful, sweeping strokes.

"Surely I will paddle hard, and in whatsoever direction you command me. Am I not the most obedient of your slaves?"

This pleased Barbara. She loved slaves. She accepted his servitude at once and fully.

"Paddle straight out into the river, and then down!" she commanded.

At the imperious note in her voice, the boy looked both amused and pleased. Obeying without a word of question, he sent the canoe leaping forward under his deep, rhythmical strokes at a speed that filled Barbara with admiration.

"Oh, how strong you are and how well you paddle!" she cried, her eyes wide and sparkling, her lips parted, the crisp, rebellious curls blowing about her face. Never had Robert seen so bewitching a picture as this small figure curled up happily in the bow of the canoe, her little shoes of red leather and her black-stockinged ankles sticking out demurely from under her short blue striped skirt, her nut-brown, slender, finely modelled arms emerging from short loose sleeves. He was proud of her praise. He was partly engrossed in displaying his skill and strength to the very best advantage. But above all he was thinking of this picture, which was destined to flash back into his memory many a time in after days, with a poignancy of vividness that affected his action like a summons or an appeal.

In a few minutes the canoe was fairly out upon the bosom of the main stream, and headed downward with the strongly flowing current. Barbara clasped her hands with a movement which expressed such rapture and relief that the boy's curiosity was excited. He began to feel that there was some mystery in the affair. Slackening his pace ever so slightly, he remarked:

"I suppose you are staying with friends somewhere in this neighbourhood. How fortunate I am – that is, if you will graciously permit me to go canoeing with you often while you are here."

But even as he spoke, his eyes took in, for the first time, the significance of the bundle and the basket, which he had been so far too occupied to notice. His wonder came forward and spoke plainly from his frank eyes, and Barbara was at a loss to explain.

"No," she said, "I am not staying anywhere in this neighbourhood. I don't know a soul in this neighbourhood but you."

"Then – you've come right from Second Westings!" he exclaimed.

"Right from Second Westings."

"All that distance since this morning?" he persisted.

She nodded impatiently.

"Through those woods – through the rapids – all alone?"

"Yes, all alone!" she answered, a little crisply. She was annoyed.

In his astonishment he laid down his paddle and leaned forward, scanning her face.

"But – " said he, embarrassed, "forgive me! I know it is none of my business, – but what does it mean?"

"Go on paddling," commanded Barbara. "Did you not promise you would obey me? I know what it means!" And she laughed, half maliciously. The boy looked worried, – and it was great fun to bring that worried look to his face.

He resumed his paddling, though much less vigorously, while she evaded his gaze, and a wilful smile clung about her lips. The current was swift, and they had soon left the imposing white columns of Gault House far behind. A tremendous sense of responsibility came over the boy, and again he stopped paddling.

"Oh, perhaps you are tired!" suggested Barbara, coolly. "Give me the paddle, and I'll set you ashore right here."

"I said just now it was none of my business," said he, gravely, appealingly, "but, do you know, I think perhaps it ought to be my business! I ought to ask!"

He retained the paddle, but turned the canoe's head up-stream and held it steady.

"What do you mean?" demanded Barbara, angrily. "Give me the paddle at once!"

Still he made no motion to obey.

"Do you realise," he asked, "that it's now near sundown, – that it will take till dark to work back against the current to where I met you, – that there's no place near here where a lady can rest for the night – "

"I don't care," interrupted Barbara hotly, ready to cry with anger and anxiety; "I'm going to travel all night. I'm going to the sea – to my uncle at Stratford! I just don't want you to interfere. Let me put you ashore at once!"

Robert was struck dumb with amazement. To the sea! This small girl, all alone! And evidently quite unacquainted with the perils of the river. It was superb pluck, – but it was wild, impossible folly. He did not know what to do. He turned the canoe toward shore, and presently found himself in quieter water, out of the current.

Observing his ready obedience, Barbara was mollified; but at the same time she was conscious of a sinking of the heart because he was going to leave her alone, when it would soon be dark. She had not considered, hitherto, this necessity of travelling in the dark. She made up her mind to tell the nice boy everything, and get him to advise her as to where she could stay for the night.

"I'm running away, you know, Master Gault," she said, sweetly, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

"Are you at all acquainted with the river?" he asked, gently, without a trace of resentment for the way she had spoken to him a moment before.

"No!" confessed Barbara, in a very small voice, deprecatingly.

"A few miles farther down there is a stretch of very bad water," said the boy. "Clever canoeist as you are, you would find it hard enough work going through in broad daylight. At night you would just be dashed to pieces in a minute."

"Oh, what shall I do?" cried Barbara, the perils of her adventure just beginning to touch her imagination.

"Let me take you to my grandmother's," he pleaded. "And we will paddle back to Second Westings to-morrow."

Barbara burst into a storm of tears.

"Never! never! never!" she sobbed. "I'll die in the rapids before I'll ever go back to Aunt Hitty! Oh, why did I like you? Why did I trust you? Oh, I don't know what to do!"

The boy's heart came into his throat and ached at the sight of her trouble. He longed desperately to help her. He had a wild impulse to swear that he would follow her and protect her, wherever she wanted to go, however impossible her undertaking. Instead of that, however, he kept silence and paddled forward resolutely for two or three minutes, while Barbara, her face buried in her hands, shook with sobs. At last he ran the canoe into a shadowy cove, where lily leaves floated on the unruffled water. Then he laid down his paddle.

"Tell me all about it, won't you, please?" he petitioned. "I do want so much to help you. And perhaps I can. And you shall not be sorry for trusting me!"

How very comforting his voice was! So tender, and kind, and with a faithful ring in its tenderness. Barbara suffered it to comfort her. Surely he would understand, if old Debby could! In a few moments she lifted her wet little face, flashed a smile at him through her tears, and said:

"How good and kind you are! Forgive me if I was bad to you. Yes, I'll tell you all about it, and then you can see for yourself why I had to come away."

Barbara's exposition was vivid and convincing. Her emotion, her utter sincerity, fused everything, and she had the gift of the telling phrase. What wonder if the serious, idealistic, chivalrous boy, upon whose nerves her fire and her alien, elusive beauty thrilled like wizard music, saw all the situation through her eyes. Her faults were invisible to him ere he had listened a minute to her narrative. She was right to run away. The venture, of course, was a mad one, but with his help it might well be carried through to success. As she talked on, an intoxication of enthusiasm and sympathy tingled along his blood and rose to his brain. Difficulties vanished, or displayed themselves to his deluded imagination only as obstacles which it would be splendid to overcome. In the ordinary affairs of life the boy was cool, judicious, reasonable, to a degree immeasurably beyond his years; but Barbara's strange magnetism had called forth the dreamer and the poet lurking at the foundations of his character; and his judgment, for the time, was overwhelmed. When Barbara's piercing eloquence ceased, and she paused breathless, eyes wide and lips parted in expectation, he said, solemnly:

"I will help you! To the utmost of my power I will help you!"

The words had the weight and significance of a consecration.

Barbara clapped her hands.

"Oh!" she cried, "How can I ever thank you for being so lovely to me? But I knew you were nice the moment I looked at you!" And a load rolled off her mind. With such a helper, already was her enterprise accomplished.