After her breakfast at old Debby's, Barbara urged forward her canoe
with keen exhilaration. Now was she really free, really advanced in
her great adventure. A load of anxiety was lifted from her mind. She
had succeeded in arranging so that the letter would be delivered to her
aunt--a matter which had been fretting at her conscience. Moreover,
old Debby had shown no surprise or disapproval on hearing of her rash
venture. It nettled Barbara, indeed, to have so heroic an enterprise
taken so lightly; but she augured therefrom that it was more feasible
than she had dared to hope, and already she saw herself installed as
mistress of Uncle Bob's home in Stratford.
"He'll love us, my babies!" she cried to the kittens in the basket, and
forthwith plied her paddle so feverishly that in a few minutes she had
to stop and take breath.
The river at this point wound through low meadows, sparsely treed with
the towering, majestic water poplar, sycamore, and arching elm, with
here and there a graceful river birch leaning pensively to contemplate
its reflection in the stream. The trees and flowers were personal to
Barbara, her quick senses differentiating them unerringly. The low
meadow, swampy in spots, was a mass of herbs, shrubs, and rank grasses,
for the most part now in full flower; and the sun was busy distilling
from them all their perfumes, which came to Barbara's nostrils in warm,
fitful, varying puffs. She noted the tenderly flushing feathery masses
of meadowsweet, which she could never quite forgive for its lack of the
perfume promised by its name. From the dry knolls came the heavy scent
of the tall, bold umbels of the wild parsnip, at which she sniffed with
passing resentment. Another breath of wind, and a turn of the stream
into a somewhat less open neighbourhood, brought her a sweet and
well-loved savour, and she half rose in her place to greet the presence
of a thicket of swamp honeysuckle. She noted, as she went, pale
crimson colonies of the swamp rose, hummed over softly by the bees and
flies. Purple Jacob's-ladder draped the bushes luxuriantly, with wild
clematis in lavish banks, and aerial stretches of the roseate
monkey-flower on its almost invisible stems. Her heart went out to a
cluster of scented snakemouth under the rim of the bank. She was about
to turn her prow shoreward and gather the modest pinkish blossoms for
their enchanting fragrance, when she observed leaning above them her
mortal enemy among the tree-folk, the virulent poison sumac. She
swerved sharply to the other side of the stream to avoid its hostile
exhalations.
The little river now widened out and became still more sluggish. A
narrow meadow island in mid-stream intoxicated Barbara's eyes with
colour, being fringed with rank on rank of purple flag-flower, and its
grassy heart flame-spotted with the blooms of the wild lily. The still
water along the shores was crowded with floating-heart, and
pale-blossomed arrowhead, and blue, rank pickerel-weed; and Barbara,
who did not mind the heat, but revelled in the carnival of colour, drew
a deep breath and declared to herself (giving the flat lie to ten
thousand former assertions of the like intimacy) that the world was a
beautiful place to live in. No sooner had she said it than her heart
sank under a flood of bitter memories. She seemed once more to feel
the water singing in her ears, to see its golden blur filling her eyes,
as on that morning when she lay drowning in the lake. The glory of the
summer day lost something of its brightness, and she paddled on
doggedly, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left.
But this was a mood that could not long hold dominion over Barbara's
spirit on this day of days, when she was journeying to freedom. It
took no more than the scarlet flash of a tanager across her bow, the
flapping of a startled brood of ducks from their covert in the sedge,
to lure her back to gladness and the seeing eye. At last the river
carried her into quite different surroundings. Still slow, and smooth,
and deep, it entered the neighbourhood of great trees growing close,
the ancient and unviolated forest. The day grew cool and solemn, the
diffused light floating hushed under the great arches of brown and gray
and green. 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.
So keen and so initiated were her young eyes that she discerned the
sleeping nighthawk on his branch, where his likeness to a knotted
excrescence of the bark made him feel secure from the most
discriminating vision. Passing a dead pine with a small, neatly
rounded hole about ten feet up the trunk, she heard, or thought she
heard, the safe conferring of the nest full of young woodpeckers in its
hollow depth--which, indeed, was probably but the stirring of her own
blood-currents within her over-attentive little ears. Suddenly the
vast stillness appeared to close down upon her, not with oppression,
but with a calm that was half fearful, half delicious; and it seemed as
if the fever of her veins was being slowly drawn away. The mystic
shores slipped by with speed, though she hardly knew she was paddling.
And when, suddenly, a great brown owl dropped from a beech limb and
went winnowing soundlessly down the stream ahead of her, she caught her
breath, feeling as if the soul of the silence had taken palpable shape
before her eyes.
Now, as it seemed to Barbara, life and movement began to appear, at the
summons of those shadowy wings. A little troop of pale-winged moths
drifted, circling lightly, over the stream; and a fly-catcher, with
thin, cheeping cries, dropped some twenty feet straight downward from
an overhanging limb, fluttered and zigzagged for a moment in mid-air,
capturing some small insect darters which Barbara could not see, then
shot back into the leafage. Then upon a massive, sloping maple-branch
close to the bank, she saw a stocky black-and-white shape slowly
crawling. The head was small and flattened, the bright little eyes
glittered upon her in defiance, and a formidable ridge of pointed
quills erected itself angrily along the back. The animal uttered a
low, squeaking grunt, and Barbara, with prompt discretion, steered as
close as possible to the opposite bank, glancing apprehensively over
her shoulder as she passed. She was strongly inclined to like the
porcupine; but his ill-temper was manifest, and she had faith in the
superstition that he could shoot his needle-like quills to a distance
and pierce the object of his dislike. Barbara could not contemplate
the possibility of appearing before her uncle like a pin-cushion, stuck
full of porcupine quills.
Barely had she left the resentful porcupine behind, safely out of
quill-flinging distance, when she observed a small, ruddy head cleaving
the water in mid-channel. A pair of prominent eyes met hers
apprehensively. Two smooth ripples curved away from the throat of the
small swimmer. It was a red squirrel whom unwonted affairs had
summoned to the other side of the river. Whatever the affairs, Barbara
was determined to expedite them as far as she could. Overtaking the
swimmer with a couple of smart strokes, she politely held out to him
the blade of the paddle. The invitation was not to be resisted. With
a scramble and a leap he came aboard, skipped along the gunwale, and
perched himself, jaunty and chipper for all his bedragglement of tail,
on the extreme tip of the bow. There he twitched and chattered
eagerly, while Barbara headed toward the shore where he would be.
While he was yet a wide space distant from it, he sprang into the air.
Barbara held her breath--but the little traveller knew his powers. He
landed safely on a projecting root, flicked off behind a tree, and was
gone. In a few seconds there came echoing from a tree-top far back in
the shadows a loud, shrill chattering, which Barbara took for an
expression of either gratitude or impudence. Caring not which it was,
she smiled indulgently and paddled on.
And now to her sensitive nostrils there came suddenly an elusive
wafture of wintergreen, and she looked around for the gray birch whose
message she recognised. The homely, familiar smell reclaimed her from
her mood of exaltation, and she realised that she was hungry. Just
ahead was a grassy glade, whereinto the sun streamed broadly. She saw
that it was far past noon. With a leap of the heart she realised that
she must be nearing the point where the stream would join the great
river which was to bear her, her kittens, and her fortunes, down to the
sea and Uncle Bob. Yes, she recognised this same open glade, with the
giant willow projecting over the water at its farther end. She and
Uncle Bob had both remarked upon its fairy beauty as they passed it
going and coming, when they had explored the stream. She had but two
or three miles farther to go, and her paddle would greet the waters of
the great river. This was fitting place to halt and renew her strength.
Pulling up the prow of the canoe upon a tuft of sedge, she took out the
basket and the bundle. From the heart of the bundle she drew a small
leather bag, containing barley cakes, gingerbread, a tiny parcel of
cold meat done up in oiled paper, a wooden saucer, and a little wooden
bottle which she had filled with fresh milk at old Debby's. Having
poured some of the milk into the saucer, and laid three or four shreds
of the meat around its edges, she released the kittens from their
basket. For two or three minutes, glad of freedom, the fat, furry
things frisked and stretched and tumbled hither and thither, while
Barbara kept watch upon them with solicitous eyes. But soon they grew
afraid of the great spaces and the woods, being accustomed to an
environment more straitened. They came back mewing to Barbara's feet,
and she turned their attention to their dinner. While they lapped the
milk, and daintily chewed the unaccustomed meat, she dined heartily but
abstractedly on the barley cakes and gingerbread. Then, having
satisfied her thirst by lying flat on the wet, grassy brink of the
stream and lowering her lips to the water, she decided to rest a few
minutes before resuming her voyage. Close by was a beech-tree, around
whose trunk the moss looked tempting. Seating herself with her back
against the tree, and the kittens curled up in her lap, she looked out
dreamily over the hot grasses--and presently fell asleep.
She had slept perhaps half an hour when a crow, alighting on a low
branch some half score paces distant, peered into the shade of the
beech-tree and discovered the sweet picture. To him it was not sweet
in the least, but indubitably interesting. "Cah--ah!" he exclaimed
loudly, hopping up and down in his astonishment. The sharp voice awoke
Barbara, and she rubbed her eyes.
"Gracious!" she exclaimed to the kittens, "what sleepyheads we are!
Come, come, we must hurry up, or we'll never get to Uncle Bob!"
Before she was really well awake, the kittens were in the basket, the
canoe was loaded and shoved off, and the adventurers were once more
afloat upon their quest. Then only did Barbara give herself time to
stretch and rub her eyes. After a few strokes she let the canoe drift
with the current, while she laid down the paddle, and cooled her wrists
and refreshed her face with handfuls of water.
As she straightened her brave little shoulders again to her labour, she
was arrested by a strange sound as of the ripping of bark. It was an
ominous kind of noise in the lonely stillness, and apprehensively she
peered in the direction whence it came. Then she grew afraid. On the
other shore, about a couple of rods back from the water, she saw a
large black bear sitting upon its haunches beside a fallen and rotten
tree. As she stared, wide-eyed and trembling, he lifted his great paw
and laid hold of the dead bark. Again came the ripping, tearing noise,
and off peeled a huge brown slab. To the exposed surface he applied a
nimble tongue--and Barbara's terror subsided. She saw that he was
quite too absorbed in the delights of an ant-log to pay any attention
to a mere girl; and she remembered, too, that the black bear was a
rather inoffensive soul so long as he was not treated contumeliously.
For all this, however, she made as much haste from the spot as was
consistent with a noiseless paddle--and kept furtive watch over her
shoulder until she had put a good half-mile between the canoe and the
ant-log.
By the time her concern about the bear had begun to flag she found that
the current was quickening its pace. The trees slipped by more
swiftly, and the shores grew bolder. A mellow, roaring clamour came to
her ears, and with delicious trepidation she remembered a little rapid
through which she must pass. Around a turn of the stream it came into
view, its small waves sparkling where the forest gave back and admitted
the afternoon sun. Her experience in running rapids had been slight,
but she remembered the course which Uncle Bob had taken, between two
large rocks where the water ran deep and smooth; and she called to
mind, the further to brace her confidence, that Uncle Bob had
stigmatised this particular rapid as mere child's play. Her heart beat
rather wildly as she entered the broken water, and the currents gripped
her, and the banks began to flee upward past her view. But her eye
held true and her wrist firm. The clamour filled her ears, but she
laid her course with precision and fetched the very centre of the
channel between the big rocks. From that point all was clear. The
canoe went racing through the last ripple, which splashed her lightly
as she passed; and in a reach of quiet water, foam-flecked and shining,
she drew a deep breath of triumph. This, indeed, was to live. Never
had she experienced a keener consciousness of power. She felt her
enterprise already successful. The ancient woods, with their bears,
their porcupines, their wide-winged brown owls, lay behind her. Second
Westings was incalculably far away. There in plain view, rising over
its comfortable orchard trees, not half a mile distant, were the roofs
and chimneys of Gault House, overlooking, as she had heard, the waters
of the great river. And beyond the next turn, as she thought with a
thrill, she would see the great river itself.