Kitabı oku: «Barbara Ladd», sayfa 10
"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.
"It's a wonder how letting down one's petticoats seems to destroy one's fondness for milk!" said Barbara.
Instead of sitting on the edge of the high bed and swinging her legs, as she would have done eight days ago, she sat on a bench and kept her feet on the floor. And from this old Debby realised, with a pang, that the child had truly grown to womanhood.
CHAPTER XX
Returning about noon to Westings House, early that they might have time to dress for dinner, Glenowen started to let down the pasture bars. But Barbara, in high spirits, went over them like a cat, forgetful of her new dignity. So Glenowen vaulted after her. As they rounded the end of the barn, Amos came leading a tall sorrel across the yard; and straightway Barbara assumed a more stately air, while a quick radiance went over her face.
"That's Robert Gault's horse!" she explained. "I want you to be very lovely to him, Uncle Bob, for he's such a nice boy, and was so very civil to me when I made him help me run away. I gave him a terrible lot of anxiety, you know!"
Glenowen laughed uproariously.
"I don't doubt you did, dear heart!" he agreed. "But Lord, oh, Lord, what a way of commending a young man to a young lady's doting uncle, to say he mighty civilly helped her to run away!"
"Now, Uncle Bob, I won't like you if you talk nonsense! You know very well what I mean. And you are to be nice to Robert!" retorted Barbara, crisply.
As they went up the long, box-bordered path, Mistress Mehitable and Robert came strolling down to meet them; and the warmth of Glenowen's greetings to Robert fulfilled Barbara's utmost demands. For her own part, however, under the sway of a sudden whim, she chose to be by no means extraordinarily civil. And Robert's contentment was dashed by a chilly doubt as to whether or no he had chosen the right day for his visit. Before they went to their rooms to dress, however, Barbara relented.
"You should have come last night, Robert," she said, turning to him graciously at the foot of the stairs. "Then Uncle Bob and I would have taken you over the lake with us this morning, in the canoe, to see old Debby!"
She threw an intimate emphasis on the "the," – and watched with a curious sense of triumph the swift fading of the cloud from Robert's face.
For this dinner Barbara dressed with unwonted care. Her plain white silk petticoat, duly lengthened, worn under her cream brocaded satin panniers, with buff satin bodice, and white lace short sleeves, gave her, as she could not but think, a most genteel appearance. With her new white silk stockings and white satin shoes, two large red roses in her bosom, and one in the dark mass of her hair just where the curl hung down, a tiny patch from the adorable new patch-box discreetly fixed near the corner of her mouth, and the new love-hood to be thrown carelessly over her head in due time, she felt herself equipped to be as imperious and unpleasant to Robert as the caprice of the moment might suggest. When she went down-stairs she found Mistress Mehitable waiting in the hall, in a gayer gown than she had ever before seen her wear. It was a silk polonaise, of a tender, gris-de-lin shade, which became her fair colouring to a marvel; and Barbara was astonished to see how young and pretty she looked.
"How perfectly lovely you look, dear!" she cried, turning Mistress Mehitable twice around, and putting a deft touch to the light, abundant, simply coiffured hair. "No one will give one look at me to-day!"
Her aunt flung an arm about her, smiling, then tripped away girlishly, flushed a pretty pink, lifted the edge of her petticoat, and displayed a slender ankle encased in embroidered sky-blue silk. Barbara clapped her hands with approval.
"It is five years since I have worn them," said Mistress Mehitable. "Seeing that I failed so, child, in my efforts to lead you along the paths of gravity, I have concluded to try and let you lead me along the paths of frivolity – a little! So I got out my blue silk stockings!" And spreading her skirts, she was in the act of making Barbara an elaborate curtsey, when Glenowen, coming up quickly behind her, caught her and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
Mistress Mehitable, startled and taken aback, blushed furiously, and stood for a second or two in confusion. Then she recovered herself. She made another stately curtsey, and saying, demurely, "Let me turn the other cheek also, Mr. Glenowen," presented her face again for a more formal and less hasty salute.
Barbara clapped her hands with gleeful approbation, but her comment brought a new rose to Mistress Mehitable's face.
"If I didn't love you so much, Uncle Bob," said she, "I'd tell Doctor John and Doctor Jim." And from the fact that she felt embarrassed by this raillery, the conscientious Mistress Mehitable was almost ready to believe she had done wrong.
The dinner was at two o'clock – an extremely formal hour for Second Westings; and a further element of formality was added by the presence of the Reverend Jonathan and Mrs. Sawyer, which effectually removed it from the category of family affairs. These outsiders, however, were a kindly pair, and cast no serious shadow upon the gathering. The Reverend Jonathan kept his austerity pretty strictly for the Sabbath; and being both well-bred and well educated, knew how on occasion to lay aside his cloth without sacrifice of dignity or prestige. He was something of a bon vivant, too, in his scholarly way, and among folk who were unimpeachably of his own class. And his judgment on a butt of Madeira or a hogshead of old West India rum was accounted second to none in Second Westings. His hands were long and white, and he used them with impressive pulpit-gestures to point his carefully constructed witticisms. His presence was favourably regarded even by Barbara, who appreciated his brains and breeding in spite of certain disastrous associations which she could never quite erase from her memory. His wife was a non-significant, abundant, gently acquiescent pudding of a woman, not without her utility as a background; and no one but Barbara had the slightest objection to her presence. But Barbara, having a fierce impatience of nonentities in general unless they chanced to be animals instead of human beings, felt critical when her eyes fell upon the good lady's expansive red bosom. She could not refrain from a private grimace at Doctor John, and from whispering in his ear an acrid comment on the inviting of a feather-bed to dinner. She was greatly disconcerted, however, when Doctor John roared aloud; and, crediting the good lady with an intuition quite foreign to her placid substance, her conscience smote her smartly for the unkind comment. By calculated chance she managed to let herself drift into the scant, unoccupied corner of the sofa on which Mrs. Sawyer was sitting; and for the long half-hour before dinner was served she beguiled the good lady most successfully with thrilling descriptions of the presents which Glenowen had brought. Mistress Sawyer was dearly fond of dining; but so enthralled did she become in the description of Mistress Mehitable's French night-rail that she did not hear when dinner was announced. Then Barbara escaped, with an appetite and a proud conscience; and proceeded to deal Robert a cruel blow by seating herself as far away from him as possible, between Glenowen and Doctor Jim, who wisely avoided trouble by avoiding interference on the dejected youth's behalf.
Doctor John and Doctor Jim being both tenacious of old Connecticut customs, the dinner began with a pudding of boiled Yokeag, or maize meal, stuffed with raisins and suet, and eaten with a rich sauce. Then came fish and meats in lavish variety, with ripe old ale, followed by elaborate confections, nuts and fruits, and a fiery, high-flavoured Madeira. With the Madeira came eloquence in conversation, and the elaborate interchange of repartee and compliment deepened into a discussion of the great matters which at that hour filled men's minds. Barbara tried by daring gaieties to stem the tide of seriousness, which seemed to her incongruous with the nuts and wine. But she was swept away, at first reluctantly, then willingly; for, during the past two years, in the intervals of fighting her aunt and loving her cats, dogs, and horses, she had studied history, both colonial and English, with a characteristic, avid zeal, and now had a pretty foundation of theory under her seemingly reckless conclusions.
In response to many interrogations, Glenowen had given at some length and with temperate fairness an account of the latest difference in Virginia between the royal governor and the stiff-necked House of Burgesses. As the result of this lamentable clash of authorities, the House had been dissolved, the Old Dominion was being governed in a fashion contrary to the terms of her long-cherished charter, and the trade of the colony was disastrously shrunken, because her people were refusing to import goods subject to duties which they had not themselves imposed. "When men and women begin to deny themselves voluntarily for the sake of a principle, whether it be right or wrong," continued Glenowen, "it is time for those at the helm to consider clearly the course on which they are steering the ship of state!"
"When kings lay hands on charters, free men rise up armed," said the Reverend Jonathan Sawyer, rolling the polished phrase with a relish. The sentiment sounded so at variance with those which he was commonly held to cherish, that every one looked at him for a moment in silent question.
"I speak but in the abstract," he explained, waving a white hand airily. "In the concrete the question baffles me, and I wait for light!"
"I confess I am astounded at Virginia," said Doctor Jim, in a great voice, solemn with reprobation. "Virginia, colony of gentlemen, siding with the rabble against the king! Where are Virginia's aristocrats?"
"Would you impugn the gentility of Mr. Washington?" inquired Doctor John, mildly.
"Yes, I would, John Pigeon," snapped Doctor Jim, "or of any one else who did not show his gentility by his deeds. And so would you, if you were not a bit tarred with the same dirty brush as Mr. Washington."
"Don't you think," ventured Robert, with diffidence, "that our grievance – for, of course, there is a grievance, Doctor Jim – is against the English Parliament? What is Parliament to us, that we should bow down to it, when we have always had parliaments of our own? What's sacred in Parliament? But the king, – that's a question of loyalty. What's a gentleman without loyalty? Surely the gentry must stand or fall with the king! Surely – "
"What nonsense, Robert!" interrupted Barbara, severely scornful, indignant at him for his views, but grateful to him for the opportunity to express her own with point. "Who was it that whipped King John into submission, and made him sign Magna Charta? Was it the riffraff or the gentry, I'd like to know? Where there is a real aristocracy, Robert, there is no need of kings!"
"Barbara, dear!" cried Mistress Mehitable, appalled at this sweeping heterodoxy. But the others laughed, with varying degrees of sympathy or dissent. Doctor Jim wagged his head.
"That's right, Robert, my boy," said he, sympathetically. "You draw her fire, and let me skirmish around. That's the kind of thing I get continually!"
"Is it true," inquired Doctor John, "that that clear and capacious intellect, James Otis, is permanently clouded since the wound he got in the affair with the king's officers?"
"''Tis true, 'tis pity; and pity 'tis, 'tis true!'" quoted Glenowen. "A fine brain wasted in a smuggler's brawl. I take it there's no wisdom to waste, among either Tories or Whigs, these days, – for these days are big with Fate!"
"Uncle Bob!" said Barbara, fixing him with a wide, level look, "what are you, Whig or Tory? You seem so careful!"
Glenowen laughed.
"You insist on pinning me down to it, do you, saucy hussy? Well, I wish I knew! I think there are some hundred thousand or more of honest men in these colonies who are trying to find out which they really are, right to the bone. But I can tell you in part. For one thing, I am an Englishman, just as much an Englishman here as if I lived in England! Do you know what that means?"
"No!" said Barbara, bluntly, dissatisfied at this caution when she counted on a hot partisanship.
"It means that I will not be taxed save by my own consent! I am too good an Englishman to let Englishmen in England treat me as less than an Englishman because I am a colonist. But I am no leveller. I have no patience with the doctrine of those sentimental Frenchmen who promulgate the palpable folly that all men are born equal. I am loyal to the king, – or, perhaps, rather, I should say, to the throne, which seems to me just now unfortunate in its occupant. But I will not pay a tax imposed by those who have no right to tax me! I would fight first. I stand on Magna Charta."
"Then you are a patriot now, Uncle Bob," said Barbara, fairly satisfied, "and before long you will be a rebel! You wait and see! You're all afraid to say it, but before long the colonies will be fighting King George!"
There were exclamations of protest from every one, even Doctor John, the avowed and consistent Whig, – every one but Glenowen, who smiled thoughtfully at Barbara's rashness.
"Tut! Tut! You little fire-eater!" exclaimed Doctor John. "You mustn't bring discredit on your party! We will fight with constitutional weapons for our just rights, and bring that pig-headed George to his senses. We must teach him to reign properly, and not to meddle, that's all. No throat-cuttings in the English family!"
"It would break my heart to fight against my countrymen," said Robert, earnestly. "But if they should be so misguided as to take up arms against the king, I should have no doubt as to my duty. The king may be unjust; but if so, the injustice will doubtless be remedied by and by. But better, surely, suffer some injustice than be traitor to your king." This speech took courage on Robert's part, with Barbara's eyes blazing scorn upon him. But he looked into vacancy, and made his confession of faith regardless of consequence.
"You fatigue me, Robert!" said Barbara. "Would you rather betray your country than your king? Was the country made for the king? What's a king? Greece and Rome did pretty well without them!"
"What's this stuff and nonsense about fighting?" broke in Doctor Jim, ignoring Barbara's argument as the chatter of a child. "Stuff and nonsense! The notion of our clodhoppers standing up to the king's soldiers, who have whipped the armies of the world! It is easy for demagogues to rant, but they'd find it still easier to run!"
"I fear you all underrate the peril – except this sauce-box here!" said Glenowen, soberly. "And you, Pigeon, are like the king's purblind advisers in underrating the spirit of the people. It is not a noisy, but a sullen temper that seems to be spreading. And clodhoppers are not all cowards! And those who call themselves patriots are not all clodhoppers."
"But who among our people can be so suicidal as to think of war?" asked the Reverend Jonathan Sawyer, taking a contemplative pinch of snuff. "To fight a hopeless battle, and in inevitable defeat lose all!"
"It is not the people who think of war as yet!" said Glenowen. "But the arrogant soldiery, the blindly self-confident officials, the insolent English officers, who seem chosen not to conciliate but to enrage. So many of the officers sent out here do dishonour to the repute of English gentlemen. They seem to look on colonists as a subject race. I have seen them, in New York and in Boston, treat our ladies with an insufferable condescension, such as they would never have dared to show toward the same ladies in England. And I have seen them studiously insolent to colonial gentlemen of birth and breeding far above their own, as if the accident of being born in the mother country instead of in America made them another race. Such conduct, while unimportant in itself, rankles deeply, and sets the two branches of the race in antagonism. Personal affront is mightier than argument, and men cannot overlook a slight to their women."
"I should think not!" cried Robert, loftily. "I would shed the last drop of my blood for the king, but I should not let the king himself put slight upon one of our ladies! I wonder you could endure to see such things, Mr. Glenowen!"
"I did not!" confessed Glenowen. "I have had several differences of late!"
Barbara's eyes sparkled, and her lips parted eagerly over her white teeth.
"You fought them, Uncle Bob! You fought them!" she cried. "Real duels! How many did you fight? Oh, how lovely!"
"Two, sweetheart, I'm sorry to say!" replied Glenowen, modestly. "It was very inconvenient and annoying, because I have so many responsibilities and could not afford to be skewered."
"And how did you come off?" asked Doctor John, leaning far over the table in his eagerness.
"Nothing but a scratch or two, thanks to the righteousness of my cause!" said Glenowen.
"And the other chaps?" inquired Doctor Jim. "Doubtless they were low-bred scoundrels, whom London would have none of! I hope you pricked 'em!"
"I wish I could feel sure that their manners had mended as well as their wounds!" laughed Glenowen, gaily.
Then, to Barbara's ill-concealed disgust, Mistress Mehitable led the way into the drawing-room, leaving the men to smoke long pipes and thrash out problems of constitutional law to the accompaniment of the fiery old Madeira. In the drawing-room she was moody and silent, grudging all the arguments that were going on without her. And when Robert, who felt himself too unseasoned to stay with his elders beyond one pipe and an extra glass, followed the ladies at a decent interval, Barbara received him far from graciously. His last speech, in comment on the insolence of the officers, had mollified her a little, but she felt a smart resentment at his presumption in maintaining views so opposite to hers.
"I should think you would stay with the other men," she said, tartly.
"I couldn't stay a moment longer," said Robert, gallantly, "for longing to be with the most fair if not the most gracious of ladies!"
"You had better go back and learn something about your duty to your country, by listening to Doctor John and Uncle Bob!" she counselled, rudely.
Robert bowed low, having himself just now well in hand, though his heart was sore.
"I take great pleasure in listening to them, as well as to Doctor Jim, who also seems intelligent!" said he.
"Oh," exclaimed Barbara, much nettled. "Doctor Jim talks a lot of nonsense just to tease me; but he doesn't mean it, – at least, not all of it. Besides, he is always interesting. But you, with your pedantic stuff about loyalty and kings and treason, I don't find you interesting at all! Please go and talk to Aunt Hitty and Mrs. Sawyer, and let me read. Perhaps I'll be able to forget what you said at dinner!"
"It is my pleasure to obey your lightest wish, fair mistress!" said Robert, inwardly indignant, but outwardly amused at her ill-humour. He went at once to the other side of the room, and exerted himself to such good purpose that soon Mistress Mehitable's rare and silvery laughter grew frequent, against an almost ceaseless gurgle of content from Mrs. Sawyer. Robert was completely absorbed, while Barbara's interest in her book was vexatiously divided. After half an hour she got up and left the room, but he never noticed her going. Fifteen minutes later she came back, with the gray and white "Mr. Grim" on her shoulder; and he never noticed her coming, so intent he was, and so successful, in his task of amusing Aunt Hitty and Mrs. Sawyer. This was carrying obedience a little too far, and it fretted Barbara. Then the men came in from the dining-room, smoky, and a little more fluent than ordinary, and Robert was ousted from his post by Glenowen and Doctor John. But instead of returning now to Barbara, he attached himself with an engrossed air to Doctor Jim; and Barbara found herself established in her nook with the Reverend Jonathan Sawyer. To be sure, his Reverence made himself most agreeable, flattering her by the attention he would have paid to a grown woman whom he considered intelligent. He appreciated her brains, and acknowledged the lengthening of her petticoats; and his attitude was a gratifying proof to her that she really had grown to be a personage, rather than a child, within the past few days. But she found herself unable to concentrate her wits on what he was saying, and passed a rather grievous hour trying to look the attention which her brain was not giving. When, at last, Doctor Sawyer arose to go, she felt that he must think her the most stupid girl in the world. Doctor Sawyer, on the contrary, enchanted by the rapt silence and appreciation with which apparently she had hung upon his words, went away with the conviction that she was a young woman of astonishing intellect, whom they had, indeed, wronged greatly in striving to force her into the narrow Second Westings mould. From that hour, when she had watched him with glowing eyes, but hearing scarce a word of all his wit, the Reverend Jonathan Sawyer was one of Barbara's staunchest champions.
When she turned from saying good-bye to Mrs. Sawyer, Barbara found Robert standing close beside her in the hall door, apparently absorbed in contemplation of Mrs. Sawyer's billowy, retreating figure. Barbara touched him on the arm, and he turned to her with a quick apologetic courtesy, as if his thoughts had been far off.
"What were you thinking of, so far, far away?" she asked, feeling somewhat left out and forlorn.
"Why – why – I was thinking – " he stammered, as if unwilling to say, yet unready with an evasion.
"Oh, you needn't tell me, if it is so embarrassing as all that!" said Barbara, tossing her head. "I was going to say, that after all the talk and the excitement, I think the loveliest thing would be some fresh, sweet air, and the smell of the woods!"
"It would be, indeed – with you!" said Robert.
"Then we will ride till supper-time. No, – there is a moon. We will ride after supper. You may escort me if you want to! Do you?"
Robert drew a long breath before he answered – and to Barbara the answer was sufficient.
"Yes, I want to!" he said, simply. "I was afraid I was to go away without really seeing you at all!"
"Go away!" exclaimed Barbara, lifting her brows in sharp displeasure. "What do you mean, Robert?"
"I must go back to Gault House to-morrow morning, without fail, for I start for New York the day following, to be gone all winter."
"Oh!" said Barbara; and turned and led the way back into the drawing-room, leaving Robert completely mystified as to the meaning of that noncommittal interjection.
