Read the book: «Barbara Ladd», page 5

"I will try hard to be worthy of your favour," said Robert, with deep gravity, feeling that now indeed was boyhood put away and full manhood descended upon his shoulders. His brain was racked with the terrific problem of finding Barbara fit lodging for the night; but meantime he turned the canoe and paddled swiftly out into the current. Hardly had he changed his course when he noticed a light rowboat creeping up along the shore. But boats were no unusual sight on the river, and he paid no heed to it. As for Barbara, she was so absorbed in watching his great strokes, and in thinking how delightful it was to have found such an ally, that the sound of the oars passed her ears unheeded, and she did not turn her head.

CHAPTER IX

At length, however, the boy noticed with a tinge of surprise that the boat was steering as if to intercept his course. He was about to pass greeting to its occupants when something in the face of the big man sitting in the stern arrested his words. At the same moment the sound of the oars caught Barbara's attention, and she turned her head.

"Oh!" she cried, shrilly. "Doctor Jim! – and Doctor John!" she added, as one of the two rowers looked around and grinned at her in humourous triumph. Then, her visions of life at Stratford with Uncle Bob falling to ruin about her, she wept aloud in her disappointment.

Robert understood, and quick as thought swerved in his course, making a dart for the swifter water of mid-channel. His heart swelled with exultation.

"They can't catch us!" he declared to Barbara.

"Stop! you young rascal!" thundered the mighty voice of Doctor Jim. "I know you, Bobby Gault. Don't I know your father's son? Stop this instant!"

"Quit this tomfoolery, Bobby!" roared Doctor John, albeit a little breathless from his labour. Barbara lifted her face and stared through her tears. But the boy paid no heed, paddling mightily, and the distance between boat and canoe was surely widening.

But Doctor Jim knew Barbara.

"Very well!" he said, grimly, in a loud voice. "I'm sorry to do bodily hurt to the son of my old friend Richard, but it can't be helped."

He drew a long-barrelled pistol from under the flap of his green coat.

"I'll have to wing you, my boy!" he said, taking careful aim, while one eyelid quivered in the direction of Doctor John.

The boy's face paled a little, but his jaw set firmly, and he kept right on.

"Stop! stop! stop!" screamed Barbara, but with no result. She half arose in the canoe, glancing with horror from the boy's resolute face to the muzzle of the pistol.

"If you don't stop, Robert, I will throw myself overboard this minute!" she vowed.

The terror in her face convinced him. He sullenly drew in his paddle, laid it down in the canoe, folded his arms, and looked off over the western hills, as if scornful of all that might take place.

In a few seconds the boat came up alongside of the drifting canoe, the oars were drawn in, and strong hands laid hold upon the gunwale. There were some awful moments of silence, broken only by Barbara's sobbing and the splashing of waves on the boat and the canoe. The owner of the boat, a gaunt farmer from Westings Landing, a few miles down the river, who had not been initiated into the mystery, looked on in discreet astonishment. This was indeed a strange situation in which to see the grandson of Lady Gault. At last Barbara, to whom suspense was hideous, broke out.

"Oh, do say something!" she wailed. Indeed, neither Doctor John nor Doctor Jim knew just what to say. They were embarrassed. But the child was right. Somebody had to say something. By interchange of quick glances the lot fell to Doctor John.

"Well, this is pretty gallivanting, running away with a young man, – carrying him off in your aunt's canoe!" said Doctor John.

Barbara's eyes opened very wide.

"I never!" she cried, indignantly.

"As for you, Bobby Gault," interposed Doctor Jim, severely, and in a tone that made Robert feel himself hatefully young, "I cannot comprehend how you should come to be mixed up in this affair. I know well what my friend, Richard Gault, your lamented father, with his nice notions of honour, would have thought of such an escapade." (Robert's father and mother had died within a few days of each other, by an epidemic of typhus, when the boy was only five years old.) "But I shall lay the matter before your good grandmother, and your uncle, who will doubtless deal with you as you deserve."

Robert shut his lips tight and eyed the speaker proudly; but Barbara made reply in her vehement way.

"It is not Robert's fault at all, I tell you, Doctor Jim!" she cried, forgetting that she had said nothing whatever on the subject. "I just met him, an hour or two ago, on an old raft; and he knew who I was; and because he was getting his feet wet on the raft, I invited him to get into the canoe; and I made him promise to paddle me just wherever I wanted to go. So there! And it is not his fault one bit! And you may do what you like to me, but I won't have him punished when he has not done anything at all!"

Doctor John tried to look quite grave; and Doctor Jim, who was really annoyed, succeeded.

"Oh, ho! young man!" he remarked, sarcastically, "it appears that you have a champion. Now, what have you to say for yourself?"

"Mistress Barbara has neglected to add," said he, with all the dignity that he could assume, "that I insisted upon her narrating to me all the unhappy circumstances of her life in Second Westings. The story commanded my fullest sympathy, and I had just given her my word that I would aid her in escaping to her uncle, Mr. Glenowen, where she would be happy, when you came and violently interfered with her purpose. I ask you, sir, to consider. Are you not ashamed to be instrumental in restoring a young lady to conditions where she has been made to suffer so cruelly?"

In spite of his indignation, Robert could not help feeling proud of this effort. In his own ears it sounded imposing, unanswerable, and altogether grown up. Barbara thought it was a miracle of eloquence, and cast him a grateful look. But Doctor John could not conceal his delight in the stilted periods. He burst into a huge guffaw, at which Barbara's eyes snapped and Robert's dark skin reddened angrily. But Doctor Jim exclaimed, hotly:

"Hoity-toity! How big we do feel! To think how often I dandled you on my knee when you were a mewling baby. If I had but known enough to spank you once in awhile, you might not have grown up to be such a priggish young coxcomb. Richard's son! Who would have thought it? Eh, what?"

Meanwhile the boat and canoe were drifting rapidly down-stream. Doctor John looked at the sun, now touching the horizon.

"Don't you think, Master Gault," said he, drily, "that unless you propose to honour us with your company to Second Westings, we had better set you ashore hereabouts, that you may stretch your legs in the direction of Gault House?"

"Thank you!" said Robert, stiffly, his heart bursting with humiliation and the longing to strangle his huge, supercilious antagonist. But Barbara interrupted.

"I'm not going back to Second Westings!" she declared obstinately, trying hard to set her full red lips together in the resolute way that Robert's had. "I will never go back to live with Aunt Hitty. I'll drown myself first. I'm going to Uncle Bob, at Stratford."

The threat, once so effective, seemed now to have lost its potency. No one appeared impressed but Robert, – and perhaps the stranger-man who owned the boat.

"My dear child," said Doctor John, eying her indulgently, "among the more or less serious obstacles to your plan is one of which I believe that even you will see the magnitude. Mr. Glenowen is no longer at Stratford."

"Uncle Bob not at Stratford?" wailed Barbara, overwhelmed, subjugated in an instant. Robert started aghast.

Doctor John paused dramatically, while the full effect of the news worked upon his victims in the canoe. Then he said, coolly:

"Mr. Glenowen is just now at Hartford, or has lately left that town. Mistress Ladd had a letter from him to-day, saying he expected to arrive at Second Westings not later than the end of next week, I think, moreover, that I saw a packet on the mantel-shelf addressed to Mistress Barbara Ladd!"

With one bound Barbara's heart passed from despair to ecstasy. Everything else was forgotten. She was as eager now to get back to Second Westings as she had been to escape from it. All she knew or cared for was that Uncle Bob would be there. He would make everything right. Her face was all radiance, as it turned to Doctor John, then to Doctor Jim, then to Robert, – who eyed her gloomily, feeling himself now cast out into the cold. But in her joy Barbara did not forget him after all.

"Just think, Robert," she cried, "Uncle Bob so near, and we would have missed him if Doctor John and Doctor Jim, the dears, had not come and caught us. They are always angels to me, you know. Now we will put you ashore right here. And you must be sure to come over to Second Westings and see me, – won't you? – while Uncle Bob is there. Come next week."

"I thank you for the gracious invitation," answered the boy, bowing a little stiffly. "But I think I had better wait for Mr. Glenowen's permission, as these gentlemen are not likely to present me to him in a very favourable light."

"Don't be silly and disagreeable, Robert," said Barbara, impatiently. "Uncle Bob will think of you just as I do. We always agree about people. Now you must hurry!"

"I think, however," persisted Robert, "I ought to wait for Mr. Glenowen's invitation."

"Right, my lad!" exclaimed Doctor Jim, much mollified by this attitude. "That's my old friend Richard's son speaking now. And I doubt not that our little mistress here will see to it that the invitation is forthcoming in good season, – eh, what?"

There was a doubtful expression on Barbara's face, over the lack of instantaneous obedience to her will on the part of her champion; but Robert, encouraged by Doctor Jim's commendation, now made a bold proposal.

"If you would be so kind, sir," he suggested, diffidently, "I should like to go down with you to the Landing, where I can lodge very well for the night at the house of an old servant of my grandmother's. It will be a long and difficult tramp for me up the shore now, in the dark, and with no road through the woods. By going with you to the Landing I might be of some service, to paddle the canoe. She will be an awkward craft to tow; and Mistress Barbara is very tired, I perceive."

"Sly young dog!" growled Doctor John. "But, seeing that he is Richard's son, we'll have to take him along with us as far as the Landing, eh, Jim?"

"Let him work his passage, then!" roared Doctor Jim. "Let him paddle the canoe, and Barbara, and her kittens, and all her contraptions, – and we'll see about not being too hard on him when we come to tell his grandmother!"

This arrangement was highly satisfactory to all concerned. The gloom fell from Robert's face, and his mouth grew boyish and happy as he paddled on in musing silence. He kept the canoe alongside of the boat, just out of reach of the oars, so that Barbara could talk conveniently with Doctor John and Doctor Jim, which she did in the most usual manner in the world, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. But presently, upon a lull in the conversation came the voice of Robert, who had been thinking about Barbara's life at Second Westings.

"Is not Mistress Ladd a very harsh, tyrannical sort of woman?" he inquired, solicitously.

There was a huge roar from Doctor Jim, which made even Barbara jump, inured though she was to these explosions.

"I'd have you remember, young sir, that you are speaking of the gentlest, sweetest, truest, most gracious lady that ever lived, for whose little shoes you are not worthy to sweep the ground!"

Robert stared in confusion, too astonished to be at once ready with an apology. Before he could gather his wits, Doctor John spoke up, more gently. He was no less loyal a champion to Mistress Mehitable than was Doctor Jim, but with him his humour was ever at hand to assuage his wrath. Subduing his great tones to a quizzical and confidential half-whisper, that feigned itself not meant for Barbara's ears, he said, amiably:

"My son, when you come to know well this little firebrand of ours, whom we have just plucked from a watery burning, this sower of dissension in our good village of Second Westings, I doubt not that you will spare a moiety of your sympathies for that very noble lady, Mistress Ladd. In truth, for all her tears and anxiety on this mad little maid's account, I have a misgiving that we are doing the sweet lady no great kindness in taking Mistress Barbara back to her. A pretty gallant you are, to undertake to carry a lady off, and then make a mess of it, and leave her embarrassed friends to straighten out the snarl!"

Under this daunting blend of rebuke and raillery, Robert fell into a deeper confusion. He floundered through a few awkward phrases of deprecation and apology, but Barbara cut in upon his struggles without mercy. The gibes of Doctor John troubled her not a whit, but one thing which he had said captured her interest.

"Did Aunt Hitty really cry when she found I had gone away? Did she really feel so badly about it? I thought she would be rather glad!"

"She was in great grief, bitter grief, Barbara. Do you think no one has feelings but yourself?" answered Doctor Jim, with some severity.

This pertinent question Barbara ignored. She turned to Robert.

"You must understand, Robert," she explained with care, "that Aunt Hitty is not really cruel to me, – at least she never intends to be. But she and I do not understand each other, and so we can't get on!"

"You will simply have to learn some of the rudiments of obedience and self-control, Barbara," said Doctor Jim. Never had he spoken to her so severely before, and she was amazed. But she saw that this time she had gone very near to forfeiting the sympathy of her most faithful allies. Perhaps, after all, she was in the wrong to run away. The suspicion only made her the more obstinate.

"I don't think one ought to obey any one, except one's father and mother," she proclaimed rebelliously. "One's father and mother, if they are good, and wise, and kind," she added, still further enlarging her freedom.

"And the king!" added Robert, sententiously. He flung out the word as a shibboleth.

There was a moment of silence. Barbara darted upon him a glance of petulant disappointment. Doctor John laughed hugely. But as for Doctor Jim, his face underwent a swift change, as he scanned the boy with new interest.

"Well said, well said; spoken as Richard's boy should speak, as a Gault should ever speak!" he thundered, in high approval. "I am sorry if I seemed abrupt a moment ago, Robert. Pardon my quick temper. I see your heart is in the right place, and you have not let them stuff your head with pestilent and plebeian heresies. Yes, yes, you must certainly come to Second Westings. I shall be honoured if my old friend's son will be my guest!"

From that moment dated a friendship between Robert and Doctor Jim which no after vicissitude was ever able to disturb.

But Barbara was of another mind.

"King George is just a stupid old tyrant, and I hate him!" she exclaimed. "I'm sorry, Robert, you have not quite so much sense as I thought you had. I'm really disappointed in you. But there are some nice Tories! You know even dear Doctor Jim is a Tory, though we can't see why, and he's just as lovely as if he were on the right side. So you may come to Second Westings, – though you must promise not to argue with me. But I know, Robert, I sha'n't like you now so well as I thought I was going to!"

"Let the young people fight it out, eh, Jim?" said Doctor John, greatly amused. "Let them fight it out between them!" Then, suddenly grave, he added, "God grant the differences now distracting our colonies grow not beyond the point of children's quarrels!"

Doctor Jim shook his head sorrowfully.

"There's trouble ahead, John. I feel it coming. This is a stiff-necked and disloyal people, and I have a foreboding. There's a sword in the air, John!"

"It's surely a stiff-necked king, Jim," muttered Doctor John.

"The sword of a Gault will ever leap from its scabbard to serve the king!" said Robert, loftily, his grave eyes aglow with exaltation.

As he made this proclamation of his faith, devoting himself to a cause of which she disapproved, and quite ignoring her feelings in the matter, Barbara felt a sudden pang of loneliness. She seemed forgotten, or, at least, grown secondary and trivial.

"Do let us hurry home to Uncle Bob!" she pleaded, her voice pathetic, her eyes tired and dissatisfied.

Then silence, with the twilight, descended upon the voyaging company; and in a little while, coming noiselessly to the landing-place, they stepped ashore into the dewy, sweet-smelling weeds and the evening peace.

CHAPTER X

A green lane, little used, but deeply rutted, led up from the wharf to the main street of Westings Landing. The village was silent, with no sign of life, except here and there a glimmer from a candle-lit window. From the pale sky overhead came the strange twang of swooping night-hawks, as of harp-strings suddenly but firmly plucked. In the intervals between these irregular and always unexpected notes was heard the persistent rhythm of a whippoorwill, softly threshing the dusk with his phantom song. Barbara felt the whole scene to be unreal, her companions unreal, herself most unreal of all. Could it be that she was the girl who had that same morning run away, that same morning made so brave and triumphant a start upon so splendid a venture? Now, somehow, she felt rather than understood the folly of it. The fact that she would have missed her Uncle Bob if she had succeeded in her plan took out of it all the zest, and it became to her a very ridiculous plan indeed. But her change of attitude was emotional rather than intellectual. She was convinced in mood, not in mind. Only she felt herself on the sudden a very small, tired girl, who deserved to be punished, and wanted to go to bed. Her conviction of childishness was heightened by the fact that Robert, who was walking just ahead with Doctor Jim, in grave discussion, seemed not only to have suddenly grown up, but to have quite forgotten her once imperious but now discredited existence. Her exhaustion, her reaction, her defeat, her disappointment in Robert, these all at once translated themselves into a sense of hopeless loneliness. She seized the large, kind hand of Doctor John, who walked in silence by her side, and clung to him.

Presently Doctor John felt hot tears streaming copiously down his fingers. Without a word, he snatched her up into his arms, carrying her as if she were a baby; and shaking with voiceless sobs, she buried her small, wet face in his comforting neck. She felt as if she wanted to cry wildly, deliciously, for hours and hours. But she managed to remember that even a very small girl may be heavy to carry over a rough road in the dusk, when the man who carries her has had a hard day's work chasing her. And, furthermore, she thought how very, very little, how poor and pitiful a heroine she would seem in Robert's eyes if he should chance to remember her existence and look back! She pulled herself together with a fierce effort, and choked down her sobs.

"Thank you so much, dear Doctor John!" she whispered in his ear. "I'm better now, and you must put me down. I'm too heavy."

"Tut, tut, sweetheart!" growled Doctor John, softly; "you bide where you are, and rest. You heavy!"

"But," – she persisted, with a little earthward wriggle to show she meant it, – "I want to get down now, please! I don't want to look like quite such a baby. Doctor John!"

"Tut, tut!" but he set her down, nevertheless, and kept comforting hold of one cold little hand. Doctor John was quick in his sympathetic comprehension of women and children, and tolerant of what most men would account mere whim. In a moment he leaned down close to her ear, and whispered:

"What are you but a baby, after all, – a tired out, bad baby, sweetheart? But we'll just keep that a secret between you and me, and not let Jim Pigeon or Master Robert even guess at it!" And Barbara squeezed his hand violently in both of hers by way of answer.

At this moment, Doctor Jim and Robert, reaching the corner of the street, turned and waited for them to come up. Doctor Jim had Barbara's precious basket of kittens on his arm, while Robert was carrying her little red bundle, which he now handed over to Doctor John. A certain reluctance with which he gave it up was quite lost upon Barbara in her unwonted humility and depression; and it was a very white, wistful little face which she turned glimmeringly upon him as he bowed over her hand.

"Why are you leaving us here, Robert?" she asked, in a small voice, most unlike the wilful tone with which she had talked to him in the canoe.

"My way lies down the street, sweet mistress," said the boy. "Your horses, Doctor Jim tells me, are waiting for you at the Blue Boar yonder. This has been a wonderful day for me. When you think of it, will you try to remember me kindly as one who would ever be your most devoted, humble servant?"

Delighted by this elaborate courtesy, so rehabilitating to her self-esteem, Barbara began to feel herself almost herself again. She thought, with a sudden prickling heat of shame, of how childish she had been during all the past year, – and she almost fifteen! And here was Robert, who was certainly very grown-up, treating her with a deference which he would never dream of paying to a mere little girl! She resolved to justify his deference, to conceal her pet childishnesses till time should mature them away; yet even as she registered this resolve, she registered a vague but deeper one, that she would cling for ever to every childish taste and pleasure in spite of the very utmost that time could do. But the feeling that came uppermost and found expression was a sharp little pang at something in his words which sounded as if he were bidding farewell for a long, indefinite time.

"But I shall see you again soon, sha'n't I, Robert?" she exclaimed, impulsively. "You'll come over to Second Westings right away, won't you, and meet Uncle Bob?"

"Yes," said the boy, bowing low again, and speaking with a mixture of hesitation and triumph, "I am promising myself that pleasure, Mistress Barbara, within a very few days. You see – Doctor Jim – he has been so kind – "

"To be sure," broke in Doctor Jim, with an emphasis to preclude any discussion of consistency, – "I've asked the lad over to visit us, John. 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 impassioned, 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.