Barbara Ladd

“ She knelt low, working her shoulders freely like a squaw, and bent every energy to making the passage of the open before a wind out of the morning should awake to hinder her progress.
A low, green point, deep-plumed with sedge, thrust out from the nearing shore to meet her. At its tip, motionless, and eloquent of ancient mystery, poised the dream-like shape of a blue heron. Nearer and nearer slipped the canoe, till Barbara could discern the round, unwinking jewel of the great bird's eye, watching her inscrutably. ”

“ On both banks of the stream the trees held out their leaves, russet and gold, amethyst and bronze and scarlet, like so many little elfin hands attesting that all fair dreams come true at last for those who have the key to the inner mysteries.
Barbara was paddling in a dream herself, when suddenly old Debby said, "Turn in here, my sweeting! Here to your right!" ”

“ Barbara slept little, but lay late, and Glenowen was away about business ere she appeared. By the time her caller arrived she was fairly herself, only subdued in spirit, sorrowful, and homesick. She had taken pains, however, that her morning toilet should be becoming; and Jerry Waite thought her pallor, the shadows about her great grave eyes, the wistfulness of her scarlet mouth, even more enchanting than her radiance and sparkle of the night before. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Barbara picked it up, fondled it in her bosom, threw herself down on the bed with it, and burst into a passion of tears. She felt as if she had been long, long away. She was poignantly homesick for her old self, her old childishness. The burden of being grown-up suddenly arose, thrust itself upon her, and grew great and terrifying and not to be borne. She was oppressed, too, with self-reproach. Absorbed in vivid and novel sensations, during the past few eventful days she had not thought as much as usual about her old comrades,—the kittens, Keep, Black Prince, and Mercy Chapman. ”

“ She had a consciousness that there were other interests lurking in life, and this kept her in an attitude of waiting. But the love between her and Doctor John and Doctor Jim lost nothing in this waiting time, but grew as Barbara grew in stature and self-knowledge; and she lost nothing of her delight in the friendship of Mrs. Debby Blue, to whose cabin she would flee about once a month, when the vagrant blood, growing riotous in her breast, would make her tolerant of no company but that of the shrewd old outlaw dame. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ Barbara herself would never wear gloves about Second Westings in summer, save at meeting, or when riding, or in pulling herbs or cutting flowers. She loved nice gloves, as a dainty and suggestive article of toilet; but she loved the freedom of her little, sensitive fingers, and felt that Second Westings had no atmosphere to fit the suggestion of gloved hands. It was manifest that Barbara was chiefly a Glenowen,—but it was equally manifest that her eyes were the eyes of the Ladds ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ He bent over Barbara's hand, but she petulantly snatched it away without letting him kiss it. Then, having shaken hands heartily with Glenowen, and bowed stiffly to Hamilton, he withdrew in great trouble of mind, feeling that now, in truth, had come to an end the truce between his honour and his love. He walked the streets half the night, and in the morning, white and dejected, but determined to know the worst at once, he went around to State Street at the earliest moment permissible after breakfast. Barbara received him coldly. But he made haste to face the issue. ”

“ When Doctor Jim heard what Barbara had done, he was sorely wrought up. He glared fiercely and wonderingly; his shaggy eyebrows knitted and knotted as he listened; he dashed his hands through his hair till the well dressed locks were sadly disarranged. When Debby ceased speaking he sprang up with an inarticulate roar, knocking over two chairs and one of the andirons.
"They have gone too far with the child," he cried out at last, mastering his ebullient emotions. "She is too high-strung for our rude handling. I swear she shall not be persecuted any longer—not if I have to take her away myself. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It made her both misunderstanding and misunderstood.
"I can trust you, can't I?" she went on, leaning childishly for a moment upon the old woman's comfortable breast.
"Trust old Debby, my sweeting!" cried the old dame, in tones which carried conviction. "Ye hain't got no lovinger nor faithfuller friend alive than me. Don't ye never forgit that, Miss Barby."
For answer Barbara clutched her fiercely around the neck, sobbed and clung to her for a moment, cried extravagantly, "Yes, you are the best friend I've got in all the world!" ”

“ Throughout the rare hour, till dusk fell, the thrushes sang ecstatically, so unusual an outburst that Barbara dragged every one out upon the wet porch to listen to the thrilling, cloistral-pure cadences, the infinite tranquillities of tone. So inspiring was that hour in the front of twilight that even the catbird down in the back garden forgot that he had been for days too busy to sing, and mounted the topmost bough of a tall cherry, and eased his soul in a chaos of golden phrases. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I don't like Aunt Hitty, you know, Debby, but she's been good to me in her way, and I don't want her to be worrying!" She held out a folded paper for the old dame to take; but she held it tentatively, as if she did not want to surrender it at once.
Knowing Barbara as no one else in the township of Second Westings knew her, old Debby betrayed neither surprise nor disapproval. She nodded several times, as if running away were the most reasonable, and indeed the most ordinary, thing in the world for a little girl of fourteen years to do when she found aunts and environments uncongenial. ”

“ But another point is, my Barbara,—by staying I should bring disaster on you all. The good folk of Second Westings—and they are good folk, though rebels, alas!—will never stand by and see the Ladds and Pigeons, whatever their views, molested by an outside world. When your fiery patriots from up the river come to ride me on a rail, Second Westings will stand in the way and get its honest head broken. You wouldn't do it, John Pigeon! You'd cut off your head, before you'd let the poor souls get their heads broken for you in a cause that they believe all wrong. ”

“ Barbara set her lips tight together, and galloped on.
"I wish you better wisdom as you grow older!" she said, coldly, after some minutes.
"The best wisdom I may ever hope to attain will be all too little to serve you with, my lady!" answered Robert, half gallantly, yet all in earnest. And Barbara could not but vouchsafe a reluctant smile in acknowledgment of so handsome a compliment. Thereafter there was little more said. They rode through the village, past the lighted inn, up the dim moonlit road to the porch of Westings House. ”

“ Arriving at the Ladd place from the rear, by way of the pasture and the barnyard, they found Doctor John awaiting them. He was leaning over the little wicket gate at the back of the garden, eating a handful of plump gooseberries. With affected sternness he eyed their approach, not uttering a word till Barbara violently pushed the gate open and rushed at him. Then, straightening himself to his full height,—he had a half-head to the good of even the towering Doctor Jim,—he extended his hand to her, and said, civilly:
"Do have a gooseberry!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mistress Mehitable's face grew grave as she read the letter. It grew pale as she looked up and saw by Barbara's face the hunger in her heart. Mistress Mehitable had a vision of what Westings House would be, emptied of the wilful, flashing, vivid, restless spirit which for the past few years had been its life. But she was unselfish. She would not say a word to lessen Barbara's delight.
"It will be lovely for you, dear!" said she, with hearty sympathy. "You are just at the age, too, when it will mean most to you, and be of most value to you. ”

“ In this way new misunderstandings were avoided; till gradually the natural love between them set deep root into their hearts, and grew strong enough to dare such tempestuous flurries of the mood as cannot but blow up once in awhile when two women are living alone together.
But while her own life had seemed to have grown so tranquil that she wondered if things had forgotten to happen, Barbara knew that in the outside world it was different, so different as to make her stillness seem like sleep. ”