Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

“ Robert felt a fierce hatred of the man George of England, who was so unworthy of his kingship! He was mad to throw himself at Barbara's feet, and tell her all his life was hers to do as she would with, to offer his faith, loyalty, honour, a living sacrifice to her love, and bid her send him to fight under whatever flag she called hers! But—he held the madness in leash. The tough fibre of his will gave a little, but would not break. The drops stood out on his forehead. But all he said was:
"Beloved, beloved, I worship you. You are all I can dream of womanhood. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One huge, dislocating shake and the champion had no more fight in him. Doctor Jim lifted his demoralised opponent bodily, carried him several paces, and dropped him over the horse trough into the dirty, deep-trodden mud. Then, seeing that Amos had got himself free, he strode back to where Mistress Mehitable was waiting, his heavy eyebrows still working with indignation.
Barbara, whom he had not seen, now had a word to say to the discomfited rabble, who one and all knew her views and admired her prodigiously. She eyed them for half a minute with slow, eviscerating scorn. ”

“ Never before, it seemed, did the vanguards of the song-sparrows and thrushes so crowd the blowing thickets with melody; never before the bright hordes of the dandelions so suddenly and so goldenly over-flood the meadows. But to Barbara the iridescent glory was somehow more sad than gloom. The fact that her cause was everywhere prospering, that success had fallen to the Continental arms beyond anything that she had dared to hope, brought her no elation. She felt the sorrow that had come into Doctor John's life in spite of the big, whimsical gaiety with which he kept it covered up. ”

“ Barbara shuddered, and seized her paddle once more to get away.
"It's good for me to be reminded, Uncle Bob," she said. "I forget, when I am happy, how wicked and foolish I can be when things go wrong! But oh, you can never know how unhappy I used to be! You'd have come to me if you had known, Uncle Bob!"
"Poor little girlie!" murmured Glenowen, his kind brown eyes moistening at the corners.
"But I was crazy, both naughty and crazy, and it was all my fault!" went on Barbara, resting her paddle again as the canoe skimmed fleetly out across the water, away from the sorrowful spot. ”

“ And as for going to fight for your side,—of course, you want to, we all know that,—but you never can get through to the coast. You can never get through our people. No, you can't, Doctor Jim! You must stay here with us. Help me hold him, Aunt Hitty!"
"Jim," said Doctor John, his voice trembling with earnestness, "I appeal to you to stay. Don't break our hearts by going. Stay for our sakes. I know, brother, how you feel,—and believing as you do, I don't blame you,—I'll never blame you. But Barbara is right. You can't get through. You can stay with a clear conscience!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ The ample spaces of blue between the thin clouds overhead grew pure, as if new bathed. The sun was not yet visible over the woods, but sent level shafts of radiance through the sparser leafage. Barbara's face was westward, and her prow, as the nervous cunning of her paddle urged it forward, threw off the water on either side in long, polished, fluted furrows, dazzlingly bright at the top of the curve and steel-dark in the depression. Child as she was, and of a fairy slightness, Barbara's wrists were strong and she was master of her paddle. ”

“ Within three days the old life had taken Barbara back at every point, and she felt as if she had awakened from a brilliant but oppressive dream. Of course it was interesting telling it all—or not quite all—to every one; to every one the truth, yet not to each the same story. There was one emphasis for Aunt Hitty and Doctor Jim, one for the Reverend Jonathan Sawyer, one for Mercy Chapman, and one much more vivid and enlightening for old Debby. ”

“ She ached to kill him, to kill her aunt, to annihilate Second Westings—saving only the animals, old Debby, Mercy Chapman, Doctor John and Doctor Jim. But when the good divine went on to say that her discipline would be concluded with a wholesome chastisement on the morrow, in the privacy of the house to which her sinful conduct had brought grief,—then, indeed, her heart stood still. She felt a great calmness come over her. She made up her mind to escape by her window that very evening and drown herself in the lake. If life contained such horrors she would have done with it. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Yet Robert's eye was the eye of the hunter, skilled in the ruses of all quarry. Barbara's woodcraft went immeasurably beyond his,—and perceiving this, her last resentment faded out and she began to initiate him. She named and distinguished for him birds of which he had never even heard, and corrected him with gleeful pride when he innocently mistook the cry of a woodpecker for that of a jay. As for Robert, his delight in this initiation was second only to his delight in his wilful initiator, who was now all earnestness and to him a marvel of abstruse erudition. ”

“ And now, to the ever-growing amazement of Mistress Mehitable, Doctor Jim took up the patting, while Doctor John, seating himself at the harpsichord, began a strange staccato picking of the keys. Then Barbara stopped singing, and gave herself up wholly to the dance. She danced with arms and hands and head and feet, and every slender curve of her young body. She moved like flames. Her eyes and lips and teeth were a radiance through the live, streaming darknesses of her hair. Light, swift, unerring, ecstatic, it was like the most impassioned of bird-songs translated into terms of pure motion. ”

“ But—oh, I do wish Winthrop had married among his own people!"
"It is late, dear lady, and you are tired after your anxieties," said Doctor Jim. "But, nevertheless, since you are so gracious, we will soon return,—eh, what, John?—for a bowl of that hot sangaree which Mehitable's fair hands know how to brew so delicately."
"Don't misunderstand Jim, Mehitable," said Doctor John, as the two withdrew. "The comfort of your punch is nothing to us as the comfort of your presence. Had you ever consented to make one man happy, how miserable would you have made others, Mehitable!" ”

“ Now Cary Patten was gone, and Jerry Waite was gone, and young Paget was gone, and the student enthusiast, young Mr. Hamilton, came no more to the old Dutch house on State Street, being engrossed in matters of secrecy and import. And now she herself and Uncle Bob were going. She felt as if that separating wind would inexorably have lifted and borne her somewhere, even if the haven of Second Westings had not been open. Fate drove indifferently, but left her free to shape her course for Westings House and Aunt Hitty, and her own apple-tree down in the back garden. ”

“ She felt the fierce tugging at Mistress Mehitable's heart-strings, though that thoroughbred little lady never revealed, save by the dark eye-shadows of sleepless nights, the pangs it cost her to be deprived in a day of the lover whom she had been half a lifetime in finding out. Barbara felt, too, the absence of Doctor Jim, who seemed to her so big and boyish and reckless and unfit to take care of himself that he could not fail to get into trouble if not kept at home and mothered by small women like herself and Aunt Hitty. And most of all she felt the crushing uncertainty as to Robert. ”

“ In this remote little world of ours, Barbara, we get into ruts, and come to think that the only way is our way."
Barbara's eyes were glowing with enthusiasm. She had discovered Aunt Kitty's heart,—and now she was discovering a breadth and insight which she could never have believed possible in that competent but seemingly restricted brain. If Aunt Hitty could thus lift herself to look beyond the atmosphere of Second Westings, and to understand people different from those she had always been used to, she must be a very great woman. Barbara's eyes flamed with the ardour of her appreciation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Well I know, what so many forget, that childish sorrows, while they last, are the most bitter and hopeless of sorrows. The wall that a man steps over blots out a child's view of heaven."
"How wonderfully you understand, Uncle Bob!" cried Barbara, with ardent appreciation.
As they neared the other side of the lake, a kingfisher dropped like an azure wedge into the ripples, missed his prey, and flew off down to the outlet clattering harshly in his throat. From the deep reeds of the point above the outlet a wide-winged bird got up heavily as the canoe drew near. ”

“ There 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. ”