Little enough, indeed, would Second Westings ever have seen of the
heartsore and rebellious child, but for this Uncle Bob. Searching his
own spirit, he understood hers; and maintaining a discreet silence as
to the chief points of his discovery, he set himself the duty of
accompanying Barbara on the long, complicated journey to Connecticut.
Not content with delivering his charge into the hands of Mistress
Mehitable,--whom he liked despite her uneasy half-disapproval of
himself,--he stayed long summer weeks at Second Westings, thus bridging
over for Barbara the terrible chasm between the old life and the new,
and by his tactful conciliation on every side making the new life look
a little less hatefully alien to her. He took her riding all over the
township; he took her canoeing on the lake, and down the outlet to its
junction with the river; and so not only won her a freedom of movement
hitherto unheard-of among the maidens of Second Westings, but also
showed her that the solace of wild woods and sweet waters was to be
found no less in Connecticut than in her longed-for Maryland.
Moreover, Uncle Bob had "a presence." Second Westings scrutinised him
severely, all ready to condemn the stranger folk to whom Winthrop Ladd
had turned in his marrying. But Second Westings felt constrained to
acknowledge at once that Winthrop Ladd had married within his class.
To high and low alike--and the line between high and low was sharply
drawn at Second Westings--it was obvious that the sister of Mr. Robert
Glenowen must have been gently born. Those who would not let
themselves be warmed by Uncle Bob's bright heartsomeness were unable to
withhold acknowledgment of his good breeding. Mistress Mehitable,
though antagonised by vague gossip as to his "wildness," nevertheless
recognised with serious relief that no common blood had been suffered
to obscure the clear blue stream whose purity the Ladds held precious.
"Light, I fear--if not, in other surroundings, ungodly; but beyond all
cavil a gentleman!" pronounced the Reverend Jonathan Sawyer, flicking
snuff from his sleeve with white, scholarly fingers. He was not so
innocent as to attach too much importance to Uncle Bob's devout
attitude through those interminable services which made a weekly
nightmare of the Connecticut Sabbath; but he had found a reserved
satisfaction in the young man's company over a seemly glass and a pipe
of bright Virginia. He had a feeling that the visitor's charm was more
or less subversive of discipline, and that it would be, on the whole,
for the spiritual welfare of Second Westings if the visit should be
brief; but meanwhile he took what he could of Uncle Bob's society.
Class against creed, and a fair field, and it's long odds on class.
But in the minds of Doctor John and Doctor Jim Pigeon--physicians,
brothers, comrades, fierce professional rivals, justices of the peace,
and divinely self-appointed guardians of the sanctity of caste for all
the neighbourhood--there were no misgivings. Their instincts accepted
Bob Glenowen at first glance. Their great, rugged faces and mighty
shoulders towering over him,--and Uncle Bob himself was nowise scant of
stature,--they looked at him and then into each other's eyes; and
agreed, as they did on most subjects outside the theory and practice of
medicine.
"You are right welcome to Second Westings, Mr. Glenowen!" exclaimed
Doctor Jim, in a big, impetuous voice, grasping his hand heartily.
"And we trust that you may be slow to leave us, Mr. Glenowen!" added
Doctor John, in a voice which any competent jury, blindfolded, would
have pronounced identical.
Recognising the true fibre and the fineness of these two big, gentle
autocrats, Uncle Bob made a special point of commending Barbara to
their hearts--in which commending he so well sped, and indeed was so
well seconded by Barbara herself, who loved them from the moment when
her eyes first fell upon them, that they presently constituted
themselves special guardians to the little maid, and indulgent
mitigators of Mistress Mehitable's conscience. The manner in which
they fulfilled the sometimes conflicting duties of these offices will
appear pretty persistently in the sequel.
It was to Uncle Bob, also, that Barbara owed the somewhat disreputable
friendship of old Debby. The very first day that he and Barbara went
canoeing on the lake, they explored the outlet, discovered old Debby's
cabin, paid an uninvited call, and captivated the old dame's crusty
heart. Glenowen knew human nature. He had the knack of going straight
to the quintessential core of it, and pinning his faith to that in
spite of all unpromising externals. He decided at once that Debby
would be a good diversion for Barbara after he was gone; and when,
later in the day, he learned that the old woman was universally but
vaguely reprobated by the prim folk of Second Westings, he was more
than ever assured that she would be a comfort to Barbara through many a
dark hour of strangerhood and virtuous misunderstanding.
But Uncle Bob's visit had to end. He went away with misgivings,
leaving Barbara to pit her careless candour, her thoughtless
self-absorption, her scorn of all opinions that differed from her own,
her caprices, her passionate enthusiasms, her fierce intolerance of
criticism or control, against the granitic conventions of an old New
England village. The half guilty, half amused support of Doctor John
and Doctor Jim gave importance to her revolt, and so lightened the rod
of Aunt Kitty's discipline as to save Barbara from the more ignominious
of the penalties which her impetuous wilfulness would otherwise have
incurred. The complete, though forbidden, sympathy of old Debby,
affording the one safe outlet to her tumultuous resentments and
passionate despairs, saved the child from brain-sickness; and once,
indeed, on a particularly black day of humiliation, from suicide.
Barbara had shaken the very foundations of law, order, and religion, by
riding at a wild gallop, one Sunday afternoon, down the wide main
street of Second Westings just as the good folk were coming out of
meeting. Her rebellious waves of dark hair streamed out behind her
little head. Her white teeth flashed wickedly between her parted
scarlet lips, her big eyes flamed with the intoxication of liberty and
protest--to these good folk it seemed an unholy light. Barbara ought
to have been at meeting, but had been left at home, reluctantly, by
Aunt Hitty, because she had seemed too sick to get out of bed. In very
truth she had been sick beyond all feigning. Then one of those violent
reactions of recovery which sometimes cause the nervous temperament to
be miserably misunderstood had seized her at an inauspicious moment.
As the tide of young vitality surged back to brain and vein and nerve,
she had felt that she must let herself loose in wild action, or die.
All unrealising the enormity of the offence, she had flung down her mad
defiance to the sanctified and iron-bound repose of the New England
Sabbath.
Such a sacrilege could not be overlooked or condoned. The congregation
was appalled. Long upper lips were drawn down ominously, as austere
eyes followed the vision of the fleeing child on the great black horse.
Could it be that she was possessed of a devil? Pitying eyes were
turned upon Aunt Hitty; and triumphant eyes of gratified grudge,
moreover, for Aunt Hitty was proud, and had virtuous ill-wishers in the
village. But Mistress Mehitable Ladd was equal to the occasion. With
a level stare of her blue eyes, a cold tranquillity upon her small,
fine mouth, she froze comment and forestalled suggestion. The feeling
went abroad, in a subtle way, that the case would be dealt with and the
piety of Second Westings vindicated in the eyes of Heaven. Doctor John
and Doctor Jim looked grave, and said not a word. This was a time when
Mistress Mehitable, they well knew, would brook no interference.
Of course there could be no question of such correction as would have
fallen to the lot of any ordinary offender. There could be no such
thing as putting a _Ladd_ in the stocks. The regular machinery of
village law rested quiescent. Equally of course, Mistress Mehitable
would do nothing in anger. She was humiliated before the whole
village, in a manner that could never be forgotten or wiped out. But
her first feeling and her last feeling were alike of sorrow only. She
would do her duty because Winthrop's child must be saved. But she had
no proud consciousness of virtue in doing it. First, she attempted to
explain to Barbara the depth, quality, and significance of her sin, its
possible influence upon the ethics of Second Westings if allowed to go
unpunished, the special variety of inherited evil which it revealed in
her nature, and her stupendous need of having this evil eradicated by
devotedly merciless correction. After the first few words of this
exhortation, Barbara heard no more. She was at all times fiercely
impatient of criticism, and now, being determined not to fly into a
fury and further complicate her predicament, she shut her eyes,
inwardly closed her ears, and concentrated her imagination on memories
of the longed-for plantation by the Pawtuxet. This concentration gave
her vivid little face an air of quietude, subjection, and voiceless
sorrow, which Aunt Hitty was glad to construe as repentance. But it
earned no mitigation of punishment. For one whole week Barbara was a
prisoner in her room, eating her heart out in hatred of the stupidity
and injustice of life. Then came around, at last, another Sabbath.
Barbara was taken to church. There her proud soul was affronted by a
public rebuke from the pastor, who exhorted her from the pulpit,
contented the congregation by a rehearsal of her punishment, and held
her up as an example to the other children of the village. Barbara
listened with shut eyes and white lips, her heart bursting with rage.
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.
She did not go that night, however, because she feared the dark. It
was gray dawn when she climbed from her window. Blind, resolved,
swift-footed, she fled through the woods. Old Debby, resting in her
punt by the lake's edge, not far from the Ladd landing-place, was
pulling some sweet-rooted water-plants of a virtue known only to
herself, when she was startled by a heavy splash and a little gasping
cry which came from the other side of a steep point some four or five
rods distant. Her vigorous old arms drove the punt through the water
in mad haste--for there was something in the cry that wrenched at her
heart. Rounding the point, she stood close in to the foot of a rock
which jutted out into five or six feet of water. Peering down over the
side of the punt, she saw lying on the bottom a slim, small body. A
groan burst from her lips, for Barbara's face was half visible; and the
old woman understood at once. She had heard the village gossip, and
she had feared a tragedy. She knew that Barbara could swim,--but there
was her long scarf of red silk twisted about the little arms lest
resolution should falter in the face of the last great demand.
For a second old Debby was at fault. She could not swim. Then her
brain worked. Reaching down with one of the oars, she twisted the
blade tightly into the skirt of the child's gown, pulled her up, and
snatched her into the boat. Experienced and ready in emergency, the
old woman thrust ashore, laid the moveless little figure down upon a
mossy hillock, and in a very few minutes succeeded in bringing it back
to conscious life. She asked no questions, while Barbara clung to her,
sobbing spasmodically at long intervals. She murmured pet names to
her, caressed and soothed her, told her she was safe and no one should
abuse her, and finally, lifting her into the punt and laying her gently
on an armful of sweet bracken in the stern, rowed over the lake to her
cabin. Throughout the journey Barbara lay with closed eyes, while the
young life, slowly but obstinately reasserting itself, brought back the
colour to cheeks and lips. Only once did she speak. Lifting her lids,
she gazed fixedly at the hard-lined old face that bent over the swaying
oars.
"Oh, why did you do it, Debby dear?" she asked, weakly. "If you knew
how I hate to live!"
"Tut! tut! honey!" answered the old woman, with a cheerful positiveness
that made her despair suddenly seem to Barbara unreasonable and unreal.
"Ye don't want to die yet awhile. An' whatever ye want, ye cain't die
yet awhile, fer I've seen it in yer blessed little hands that ye've got
a long life afore ye. Moresoever, I read it that life's got a heap of
happiness in store fer ye. So you be brave, Miss Barby, an' think how
Uncle Bob would 'a' broke his poor heart if ye'd got yer own way an'
drownded yerself."
"Yes," murmured Barbara, drowsily, sinking away into peace after her
long pain, "Uncle Bob would have been sorry!" Then, after a pause, she
added softly under her breath: "I'll run away and go to Uncle Bob some
day!"
Old Debby heard the words, but made no comment. She stored them in her
memory, and afterward kept crafty watch whenever she saw, by Barbara's
mood, that a crisis was on at Aunt Kitty's. For the time, however, she
felt no great anxiety, it being very plain to her that this present
crisis was past, and that Barbara was no longer strung up to the pitch
of violent action or any course that would require initiative. Nerve
and will alike relaxed, the child was submissive through exhaustion.
At the cabin Debby first made her eat some breakfast, and then got her
interested in a brood of chickens just one day out of the shell. The
mother hen ruffled her feathers, scolded in shrill protest, and pecked
angrily, but Barbara reached under the brooding wings and drew out a
bead-eyed, golden-yellow, downy ball. Her face lightened tenderly as
she felt the tiny bill and fragile baby claws snuggling against her
enclosing palms.
"She's all right now!" said old Debby to herself, nodding her head in
satisfaction. Aloud she said,--as she got a clean white sunbonnet out
of the chest, adjusted it on her sparse locks, and tied its strings
beneath her grim chin,--"I'm goin' to leave ye a bit, honey, to mind
the chickens fer me an' look after the place while I go in to Second
Westings to hev a bit o' talk with Doctor Jim. Promise me not to quit
the place while I'm gone?"
"I'll take good care of everything till you get back, Debby," answered
Barbara, abstractedly, without turning her head. She had relinquished
the downy chicken, and was busy conciliating the ruffled hen with
crumbs.