THE HEART OF BARBARA
The Ambassador, standing by the mantel, looked thoughtfully at his wife.
She sat in a big wicker chair, in a soft dressing-gown, her hands
clasped over one knee in a pose very pretty and girlish.
"Come!" he said good-humoredly. "You women are always imagining romances
and broken hearts. Why, Barbara and Daunt haven't known each other long
enough to fall in love."
She looked at him quizzically. "Do you remember how long we had known
each other when you--"
"Pshaw!" he retorted. "That's just like a woman. She never can argue
without coming to personalities. Besides, there never was another girl
like you, my dear--I couldn't afford to take any chances."
"Away with your blarney, Ned! You know I'm right, though you won't admit
it."
"Of course I won't. Daunt's not a woman's man. He never was. He's been
getting along pretty well with Barbara, no doubt. But this man she's
going to marry she's known for a year. The bishop told me about him the
day after they landed. He thought she was practically engaged to him
then."
"'Practically!'" she commented with gentle scorn. "Are girls who have
been properly brought up ever 'practically' engaged, and not fully so?
She may have expected to marry him, and yet if I ever saw a girl in
love--and, oh, Ned, remember that I understand what that means!--she was
in love with Daunt yesterday. We women see more than men and feel more.
Patsy saw it too. She's feeling badly about it, poor child, I think."
"Nonsense!" the ambassador sniffed. "There isn't a shred of evidence.
Barbara's not a flirt in the first place, and, if she were, Daunt can
take care of himself."
"He came to your study, didn't he, after the ball? I thought I heard his
voice in the hall."
"Yes," he answered.
"How did he look?"
"Well," he said hesitatingly, "he was a bit off color, I thought. I told
him to take a few days off and run up to Chuzenji."
"Is he going?"
"Yes. He's leaving early in the morning. But don't get it into your
sympathetic little head that it has the slightest thing to do with
Barbara. The idea's quite absurd. He's never thought of such a thing as
falling in love with her!"
"Don't you think a woman _knows_ about these things?"
"When she's told. And Barbara has told you, hasn't she?"
"That she is going to marry Mr. Ware. Yes."
"Well, what more do you want?"
She shook her head. "Only for her to be happy!" she said tremulously.
"I've never known a girl who has grown so into my heart, Ned. I feel
almost as though she were Patsy's sister. She has no mother of her
own--no one to advise her. And yet--I--somehow I couldn't talk about it
to her. I _tried_. She doesn't want to. It seemed almost as if she were
afraid."
"Afraid?"
"Of doing something else. As if she were going into this marriage as a
refuge. I don't know just why I felt that, but I did. She was so very
pale, so very quiet and contained. It didn't seem quite natural. It made
me think of Pamela Langham. You remember her? She was in love with a man
who--well, whom she found she couldn't marry. He wasn't the right sort.
I suppose she was afraid she would marry him anyway if she waited. So
she married another man at once--a man who had been in love with her for
years. We were just the same age and she told me all about it at the
time. To-night when Barbara told me she had promised to marry this Mr.
Ware--and soon, Ned!--I seemed to see poor little dead Pamela looking at
me with her pale face and big, deep eyes."
She turned her head and furtively wiped her eyes. "If I could only be
sure!" she said. "But I think how I should feel--if it were Patsy, Ned!"
* * * * *
And while they talked, Barbara lay in her blue-and-white room, wide-eyed
in the dark. The smiling, ball-room mask had slipped from her face and
left it strained and white. She had drawn the curtain and shut out the
misty glory of the garden--and the small white cottage across the
scented lawn.
In those few agonized hours of the afternoon, while she had lain there
thrilling with suffering, something deep within her had seemed to
fail--as though a newly-lighted flame, white and pure, had fallen and
died. Where it had gleamed remained only a painful twilight. It had been
a different Barbara that had emerged. The fairest fabric of those
Japanese days had crashed into the dust, and in the echo of its fall she
stood anchorless, in terror of herself and of the future. The harbor of
convention alone seemed to offer safety--and at the harbor entrance
waited Austen Ware. At the ball the die had been cast.
Outside the window she could hear the rasp of the pine-branches and the
sleepy "korup! korup!" of a pigeon. A tiny night-lamp was on the stand
beside her. Its gleam lit vaguely the golden Buddha on the Sendai chest.
Its face now seemed cold and blank and cruel, and in its dim light, on
the shadowy wall, sharp detached pictures etched themselves. She saw
herself looking at Austen Ware's yacht, set in that wonderful, warm,
orient bay--a swift, white monitor, watching her! She saw a yellow rank
of convicts filing into the yawning mouth of Shimbashi Station--like the
long, drab years of savorless lives! She saw the great white plaster
figure over the entrance-arch of the Yoshiwara--beckoning to hollow
smiles that covered empty hearts!
Over the thronging pictures grew another--a misty, nightgowned little
figure who stood by her, whispering her name. Patricia, after sleepless
hours, crept from her bed to Barbara's room, longing for some assurance,
she knew not what, some breath of the old girlish confidences to melt
the ice that seemed to have congealed between them. And Barbara, with
the first phantom of softened feeling she had known that night, took the
other into her arms.
But it was she who comforted, whispering words that she knew were empty,
caressing the younger girl with a touch that held no tremor, no hint of
those anguished visions that had floated through the leaden silences of
her soul.
Till at last, Patricia, half-reassured, smiled and fell asleep; while
Barbara, her loose gold hair drifting across the pillow, her bare arm
nestling the dark, braided head beside her, lay stirless, staring into
the shadows, where the pale glimmer of the Buddha floated, a ghostly
_chiaroscuro_.