Marian Hurd McNeely

“ The large room seemed to her bewildered eyes fairly decorated with children. Every broken-down buggy and sleigh was filled with more than its quota, and prancing steeds were tugging at the ancient shafts in vain. In a corner of the room, ten boys were fighting for possession of a dilapidated harness. Shrieks of delight were rising from the hay-mow above her head, and thin little legs were running up and down the upright ladder with spider-like agility.
[163]
Barbara gasped. “Mrs. Enderby!” she exclaimed. “How shall we ever get them together again!” ”

“ THE DUCHESS IT was eleven o’clock in the morning, and Barbara threw herself into the hammock on the porch, every nerve in her body tingling with fatigue. In a chair near by sat the Kid, driving imaginary horses along Main Street, and politely removing his hat to every one he met on the way. He inquired whether Barbara desired to ride on the front seat with him, but she was so tired that she scarcely answered the little boy, and wearily closed her eyes to avoid seeing David’s book and Jack’s racket lying on the piazza floor. ”

“ Barbara, heartily. “And really, Sue, you are a godsend to me, for you are the only girl in town that is congenial to me at all.”
Susan looked pleased. “That’s kind of you,” she answered. “Well, I must not keep you from helping your mother. By the way, how is she to-day? Everybody is saying how tired and worn out she looks, and is glad that you have come to share her burdens.”
“Why, mother’s all right,” replied Barbara. “How people will talk and gossip about nothing! Good-by, Sue dear. Take some roses on the way out. ”

“ BARBARA SANK DOWN WEARILY
“I’ve been asleep,” thought Barbara, bitterly, “asleep and dreaming.”
“Then Medea clapped her hands together, and cried, ‘Sing louder, Orpheus; sing a bolder strain; wake up these hapless sluggards, or none of them will see the land of Hellas more.’
“Then Orpheus lifted his harp, and crashed his cunning hand across the strings, and his music and his voice rang like a trumpet through the still evening air: into the air it rushed like thunder, till the rocks rang, and the sea, and into their souls it rushed like wine, till all hearts beat fast within their breasts.” ”

“ The Infant ran down the corridor, and came back with her battered dish; and the girls gathered together on the dusty floor around the box, which now served as a table. Their faces, worn from the strain of the week of graduation, relaxed noticeably as the familiar odor began to float upon the air.
“This is comfortable,” sighed Barbara, gratefully. “Let me take the spoon, Infant. Your four years of college life have not yet A. B.’d you in fudge.” ”

“ She made her bed with resigned patience, pinned an “Engaged” sign on her door, and fell to work. But even through the closed door came the busy sounds of an active household. A thump, thump, thump of the furniture downstairs in the living-room proclaimed that a vigorous sweeping was going on; the maddening click-click-clash outside drew her to the window to behold Jack sulkily guiding the lawn-mower. Just below her came the measured hum of the sewing-machine, and Barbara remembered, with a guilty start, that she had promised to finish those sheets herself, the day before. ”

“ Getting admission to her room nowadays is attended with all the formalities of the Masonic ritual, and she goes about with ink on her fingers and ink on her nose. I suppose she is fired by the ambition of the Banbury Cross lady in making ‘music wherever she goes.’ Poor little Barbara; she’s taking herself so very seriously, these days! She feels that she must gush forth a stream of living water for thirsty mankind, forgetting, dear little lass, that she is not a spring yet, but only a rain-barrel. ”

“ It was a winding road that twisted its way uphill like a yellow shaving curl. Midsummer lay heavy on the farm-lands stretching away on either side. The corn-fields gleamed yellow in the sunshine, the locusts filled the air with their incessant drone, and goldenrod and wild asters, covered with a veil of dust, flaunted in every corner of the rail-fences. Barbara loved those rail-fences, built in the days when time was the farmer’s chief asset, and now rapidly giving way to the ugly, prosaic barbed-wire that is so symbolic of the present age of commercialism. ”

“ Barbara drew a long breath of anger and walked away.
“It wouldn’t be so bad,” she said ruefully to her father, a few days later, “if only she didn’t assume all the powers and prerogatives of a sovereign. But she has actually reduced the children to the most subdued state you can imagine. Jack never ravages the pantry now, since Mrs. Harris caught him that first afternoon, and asked him kindly if he would mind leaving enough for the rest of us. Even Gassy never answers her saucily, and David goes about the house like a crushed piece of nothing. And yet she isn’t a bit cross or unkind. ”

“ I can’t pull you away from books at home, but you don’t seem to be able to concentrate your mind on your school work.”
“Lessons are so unint’resting,” said David. “If I was in history or mythology, now, I’d like those; but I only have reading and ’rithmetic and language and g’ography. I’ve read everything in my reader a million times, and every time we come to a beauteous sentence in our language lesson we have to chop it up into old parts of speech. I can’t do numbers at all, and I just hate g’ography!” ”

“ I can fan the children, if you want me to. Any come yet?”
“No, not yet,” replied Barbara. She had been awaiting the arrival of Mrs. Enderby with that desire for moral support which a new undertaking always brings upon its authors. Mrs. Enderby, as the mother of six children, might well be expected to furnish any amount of support derived from experience; but somehow, as Barbara looked at her, she felt that she had made a great mistake. A cushion cannot serve as a propelling-board; and poor Mrs. Enderby looked very cushiony.
She sat rocking slowly and evenly on the porch. ”

“ In the middle of the floor sat the Idgit, a whity-yellow island in a sea of raspberry juice and broken glass. From the oven of the gas-stove came a volume of flame and smoke. The stove-lids lay on the floor, and the kitchen was full of flying flecks of soot. Barbara rushed to the stove, and turned off the burners, one by one. ”

“ By that time Barbara could truthfully answer that she was. “What is it?” she asked.
“I’m sorry to disturb you,” said Aunt Sarah, in a voice that betokened anything but regret. “But I am in such a state of mind that [209] even New Thought fails to calm me. I was never so insulted in my life as by the treatment that has been accorded me and mine while in my own niece’s home.”
“What do you mean, Aunt Sarah?” cried Barbara, now thoroughly aroused.
“I mean just this: Cecilia has been according Edward’s children a system of torture that has nearly robbed them of their sanity.” ”

“ For Barbara, the entire entertainment of the day was not furnished by the program. Between the swaying fans she caught glimpses of Mrs. Enderby’s placid face, relaxed in sleep; from the church kitchen came the rattle of paper napkins and the clink of Miss Pettibone’s tray, and from the rear of the room sounded, at intervals, the cough of Mrs. Crampton, a genteel warning to speakers that their voices did not “carry.”
“Was there ever a human being more frightfully out of her element than I am [147] here!” thought Barbara. “If the House-Plant could only see Mrs. Enderby! ”

“ Barbara took the spoon out of the fudge dreamily. “You may be right,” she said to the Infant. “You know I didn’t get the Eastman Scholarship.”
“Don’t you ever mention that odious thing again!” cried Atalanta. “You know that the whole class thinks you should have had it.”
[6]
Barbara turned her face aside to hide a momentary shadow.
“Well, in any case,” she said, “there is work ahead for me. Every one who anticipates a literary career must work hard for recognition.”
“You won’t have to,” declared the House Plant, hugging her chum, and followed by a murmur of assent from the floor. ”

“ In the three weeks that followed, Barbara discovered that nothing can “keep you from worrying” when the dark shadow that men call Dread of Death stands on the threshold. She marveled constantly that one frail little body could withstand such desperate onslaughts of fever and pain. David’s illness was quick of development: the drowsiness was followed by days of high fever, and these were succeeded by nights of unconsciousness which plainly showed the strain to which the little frame was being subjected. ”

“ Jack turned, without a word, to his own room, and Barbara heard him throw himself on the bed with a half-stifled moan. She herself opened her bedroom door and went in. Sleep was out of the question. She fell upon her knees beside her couch and prayed,—an inarticulate, broken cry for the help that is beyond human power. Then she lighted her little night lamp, and sat down before her desk with a volume of Emerson in her hand. She turned to the essay on Compensation, and read, her eyes seeking and finding the detached sentences that seemed written for her:—
We cannot part with our friends. ”

“ About four o’clock in the afternoon, as Barbara was giving capable directions in the kitchen, a knock sounded on the door.
“I just ran in this way,” said Susan, “because I wanted to congratulate you, and to see if you don’t want this chocolate cake for supper. Barbara, what are you laughing at?”
“This is the third cake I have received to-day for mother,” giggled Barbara, “and four chickens are waiting to be consumed. But put it down, Sue dear, and Jack will make a hole in it very soon.”
“Well, anyway,” Susan declared, “it’s because every one loves your mother so much! ”

“ THE END OF THE INTERREGNUM THE Grafton children stood in a row, watching their father and Barbara establish David in the big Morris chair, on the occasion of his first trip downstairs. Joy and awe were struggling for supremacy in their hearts, but were carefully concealed after the fashion of young America.
“Well, David,” said Jack, jocularly, “you look just exactly like a collapsed balloon. Remember how nice and round you used to be? Now, hurry up and get there again. It was becoming.”
“He reminds me of the pictures of the famine-sufferers in India,” remarked Gassy. ”

“ Why, father doesn’t know poetry,—except Riley and Bret Harte; and mother doesn’t care for it.”
Mrs. Willowby’s sweet brown eyes twinkled. “You’re joking with me, Barbara.”
“No, I’m in earnest.”
“You dear little girl! Are you such a stranger to your own home people? I don’t believe that Matthew Arnold ever wrote anything that your mother doesn’t know. Where she gets time, with all her multitudinous duties, to love Shelley, and live Browning, and keep abreast of Stephen Phillips and Yeats, I don’t see; but she does it, somehow. She is one of the few true poetry-lovers I know. ”

“ Poor girl, I can help her so much. And of course it will be a mental stimulus to me, too.”
“I’m afraid Susan won’t have time.”
“Why, what is she doing?”
“Housework,” replied her mother. “She is cooking, and caring for her father and brothers, and she does it well, too.”
“What a shame!”
“What, to do it well?”
“You know what I mean, you wicked mother. A shame to let all that mental ability go to waste, while the pots and pans are being scoured. It doesn’t take brains to do housework.”
“Doesn’t it!” sighed Mrs. Grafton; “I find, all the time, that it takes much more than I possess. ”

“ A prodigy now and then must be encouraging to a college faculty, but it’s a bit hard on the prodigy herself, and harder still on the prodigy’s family. Intellectual lights ought to be hidden under a ton, instead of a bushel, so it wouldn’t be so easy to dig them out. I believe, myself, that Barbara has a fine mind, and unusual ability, but, dear heart, she’s only a child! She has to live before she can write. ”

“ They do need me here.”
“It’s the same old place,” said Barbara, at four o’clock the next afternoon, “the same dear, old, sleepy place. Aside from the fact that I find some more tucks let down in gowns and some more inches added to trousers each year, I don’t think Auburn changes anything—even her mind—from going-away time to coming-home time. Procrastination is the spice of life, here.”
“The things that keep a town awake are usually sent away to college,” said her mother, slyly. “But Auburn is solid, as well as conservative.” ”

“ To the management of the housework, Barbara gave little thought. Meals were scarcely an incident in those days of waiting. Little by little, as conditions grew graver in the invalid’s [241] room, Barbara gave up more and more of her household duties, yet she was vaguely aware that things went on like clockwork downstairs. The meals that appeared upon the table were delicious, and yet Susan’s part in them was not obvious. She slipped in and out of the house at all hours, always bringing comfort with her, and yet bestowing it so quietly that it seemed the gift of a beneficent fairy. ”

“ The small girl rushed at her tormentor, leapt upon him, and thrust a cold little hand inside of his gray sweater.
“There, there, children, don’t squabble before Barbara; she’s forgotten that you are not always friends,” said Mrs. Grafton. “Run back to bed, Cecilia; you’ll take cold. The rest of us are going, too. It’s long past bedtime.”
Barbara had expected to find the first nights away from her college room lonely ones; but the big four-poster, ugly as it had always seemed to her, was an improvement upon the cot that was a divan by day and a bed by night. ”