THE PIPE OF PEACE.
BARBARA went to her room. She ran up the stairs: her stateliness was
gone when she was out of sight. She bolted her door, threw herself on
her knees beside her bed, and buried her face in the counterpane.
‘I am so happy!’ she said; but her happiness can hardly have been
complete, for the bed vibrated under her weight—shook so much that it
shook down a bunch of crimson carnations she had stuck under a sacred
picture at the head of the bed, and the red flowers fell about her dark
hair, and strewed themselves on the counterpane round her head. She did
not see them. She did not feel them.
If she had been really and thoroughly happy when at last she rose from
her knees, her cheeks would not have shone with tears, nor would her
handkerchief have been so wet that she hung it out of her window to dry
it, and took another from her drawer.
Then she went to her glass and brushed her hair, which was somewhat
ruffled, and she dipped her face in the basin.
After that she was more herself. She unlocked her desk and from it took
a small box tied round with red ribbon. Within this box was a shagreen
case, and in this case a handsome rosewood pipe, mounted in silver.
This pipe had belonged to her uncle, and it was one of the little items
that had come to her. Indeed, in the division of family relics, she
had chosen this. Her cousins had teased her, and asked whether it was
intended for her future husband. She had made no other reply than
that she fancied it, and so she had kept it. When she selected it, she
had thought of Jasper. He smoked occasionally. Possibly, she thought
she might some day give it him, when he had proved himself to be truly
repentant.
Now he was clear from all guilt, she must make him the present—a token
of complete reconciliation. She dusted the pretty bowl with her clean
pocket-handkerchief, and looked for the lion and head to make sure that
the mounting was real silver. Then she took another look at herself in
the glass, and came downstairs, carrying the calumet of peace enclosed
in its case.
She found Jasper sitting with Eve on the bench where she had left them.
They at once made way for her. He rose, and refused to sit till she had
taken his place.
‘Mr. Jasper,’ she said, and she had regained entire self-command, ‘this
is a proud and happy day for all of us—for you, for Eve, and for me. I
have been revolving in my mind how to mark it and what memorial of it
to give to you as a pledge of peace established, misunderstandings done
away. I have been turning over my desk as well as my mind, and have
found what is suitable. My uncle won this at a shooting-match. He was a
first-rate shot.’
‘And the prize,’ said Jasper, ‘has fallen into hands that make very bad
shots.’
‘What do you mean? Oh!’ Barbara laughed and coloured. ‘You led me into
that mistake about yourself.’
‘This is the bad shot I mean,’ said Jasper: ‘you have brought Miss Eve
here to me, and neither does Eve want me, nor do I her.’
Barbara opened her eyes very wide. ‘Have you quarrelled?’ she inquired,
turning to see the faces of Jasper and her sister. Both were smiling
with a malicious humour.
‘Not at all. We are excellent friends.’
‘You do not love Eve?’
‘I like Eve, I love someone else.’
The colour rushed into Barbara’s face, and then as suddenly deserted
it. What did he mean? A sensation of vast happiness overspread her, and
then ebbed away. Perhaps he loved someone at Buckfastleigh. She, plain,
downright Barbara—what was she for such a man as Jasper had approved
himself? She quickly recovered herself, and said, ‘We were talking
about the pipe.’
‘Quite so,’ answered Jasper. ‘Let us return to the pipe. You give it
me—your uncle’s prize pipe?’
‘Yes, heartily. I have kept it in my desk unused, as it has been
preserved since my uncle’s death; but you must use it; and I hope the
tobacco will taste nice through it.’
‘Miss Jordan,’ said Jasper, ‘you have shown me such high honour, that I
feel bound to honour the gift in a special manner. I can only worthily
do so by promising to smoke out of no other pipe so long as this
remains entire, and should an accident befall it, to smoke out of no
other not replaced by your kind self.’
Eve clapped her hands.
‘A rash promise,’ said Barbara. ‘You are at liberty to recall it. If
I were to die, and the pipe were broken, you would be bound to abjure
smoking.’
‘If you were to die, dear Miss Jordan, I should bury the pipe in your
grave, and something far more precious than that.’
‘What?’
‘Can you ask?’ He looked her in the eyes, and again her colour came,
deep as the carnations that had strewed her head.
‘There, there!’ he said, ‘we will not talk of graves, and broken pipes,
and buried hearts; we will get the pipe to work at once, if the ladies
do not object.’
‘I will run for the tinder-box,’ said Eve eagerly.
‘I have my amadou and steel with me, and tobacco,’ Jasper observed;
‘and mind, Miss Barbara is to consecrate the pipe for ever by drawing
out of it the first whiff of smoke.’
Barbara laughed. She would do that. Her heart was wonderfully light,
and clear of clouds as that sweet still evening sky.
The pipe was loaded; Eve ran off to the kitchen to fetch a stick out
of the fire with glowing end, because, she said, ‘she did not like the
smell of the burning amadou.’
Jasper handed the pipe to Barbara, who, with an effort to be demure,
took it.
‘Are you ready?’ asked Jasper, who was whirling the stick, making a
fiery ring in the air.
Barbara had put the pipe between her lips, precisely in the middle of
her mouth.
‘No, that will not do,’ said the young man; ‘put the pipe in the side
of your mouth. Where it is now I cannot light it without burning the
tip of your nose.’
Barbara put her little finger into the bowl to assure herself that it
was full. Eve was on her knees at her sister’s feet, her elbows on her
lap, looking up amused and delighted. Barbara kept her neck and back
erect, and her chin high in the air. A smile was on her face, but no
tremor in her lip. Eve burst into a fit of laughter. ‘Oh, Bab, you look
so unspeakably droll!’ But Barbara did not laugh and let go the pipe.
Her hands were down on the bench, one on each side of her. She might
have been sitting in a dentist’s chair to have a tooth drawn. She was a
little afraid of the consequences; nevertheless, she had undertaken to
smoke, and smoke she would—one whiff, no more.
‘Ready?’ asked Jasper.
She could not answer, because her lips grasped the pipe with all the
muscular force of which they were capable. She replied by gravely and
slowly bowing her head.
‘This is our calumet of peace, is it not, Miss Jordan? A lasting peace
never to be broken—never?’
She replied again only by a serious bow, head and pipe going down and
coming up again.
‘Ready?’ Jasper brought the red-hot coal in contact with the tobacco
in the bowl. The glow kindled Barbara’s face. She drew a long, a
conscientiously long, breath. Then her brows went up in query.
‘Is it alight?’ asked Eve, interpreting the question.
‘Wait a moment——Yes,’ answered Jasper.
Then a long spiral of white smoke, like a jet of steam from a kettle
that is boiling, issued from Barbara’s lips, and rose in a perfect
white ring. Her eyes followed the ring.
At that moment—bang! and again—bang!—the discharge of firearms.
The pipe fell into her lap.
‘What is that?’ asked Eve, springing to her feet. They all hurried out
of the garden, and stood in front of the house, looking up and down the
lane.
‘Stay here and I will see,’ said Jasper. ‘There may be poachers near.’
‘In pity do not leave us, or I shall die of fear,’ cried Eve.
The darkness had deepened. A few stars were visible. Voices were
audible, and the tread of men in the lane. Then human figures were
visible. It was too dark at first to distinguish who they were, and the
suspense was great.
As, however, they drew nearer, Jasper and the girls saw that the party
consisted of Joseph, the warder, and a couple of constables, leading a
prisoner.
‘We have got him,’ said Joseph Woodman, ‘the right man at last.’
‘Whom have you got?’ asked Barbara.
‘Whom!—why, the escaped felon, Martin Babb.’
A cry. Eve had fainted.