Mistress Mehitable liked Robert, whose bearing and breeding were in all
ways much to her taste. She had seen him when a babe in arms, just
before his father and mother had taken him away from Gault House to New
York. So gracious was she, that Robert was filled with wonder as he
thought of the piteous story which Barbara had told him in the canoe.
But this wonder was as nothing, compared to the amazement with which he
viewed the warm affection between Barbara and her aunt. What could it
all mean? It was plain that they two understood each other, trusted
each other, admired each other, loved each other. He had an uneasy
feeling that Barbara had made a fool of him. Then, as his dignity was
beginning to feel ruffled, and his grave young face to darken, he would
remember other details of that eventful afternoon which forbade him to
question the girl's sincerity. At this the cloud would lift. There
was a mystery behind it all, of course, which he would doubtless, in
his determined fashion, succeed in penetrating. Meanwhile, every one
seemed extremely happy,--Barbara gaily, whimsically gracious, Mistress
Mehitable composedly glad, Doctor Jim as boisterous in his joy as good
manners would permit, Doctor John quizzically approving, and filled
with mellow mirth. Robert was made to feel himself an honoured guest,
for his own sake as well as for the sake of his parents; and in this
cordial atmosphere he soon justified all good opinions. Barbara was
intensely gratified with him. She audaciously claimed credit for
having discovered him, and rescued him from the barbaric wilderness
that lay beyond Second Westings. She began to plan expeditions and
amusements to make his visit memorable; and when he announced his
intention of returning to Gault House on the morrow, there was a
unanimous protest. Mistress Mehitable said it was not to be heard of,
for one moment. Doctor Jim growled that his hospitality was not to be
flouted in any such fashion. Doctor John levelled bushy eyebrows at
him, and suggested that no true Gault would run away in the hour of
triumph.
"You will do nothing of the kind, Robert," decreed Barbara, with
finality. "We want you here. I wonder you are not ashamed, after all
the trouble you made for us so lately, when you were old enough and big
enough to know better!"
Robert's face flushed with pleasure at all this warmth; and he hugely
wanted to stay. But with astonishing discretion he refused to be
persuaded. Some intuition taught him the wisdom of timely reserve.
Without at all formulating any theory on the subject, which would have
been impossible to such inexperience as his, he felt instinctively that
at this moment, when she was most gracious to him, a judicious absence
would best fix him in Barbara's interest. He said there were matters
to be attended to for his grandmother which would not well bear delay.
At this unexpected firmness on the part of her cavalier, Barbara was so
annoyed that for nearly an hour she seemed to forget his existence; but
Robert hid his discomfort under an easy cheerfulness, and no one else
seemed to notice the passing shadow. Mistress Mehitable insisted that
the guests should stay to sup with her and Barbara; and the boy's
coming was made a little festival. Mistress Mehitable was one of those
notable housekeepers who seem to accomplish great things with little
effort by being craftily forehanded. Before anything was said of
supper she had vanished for a few minutes to the kitchen; and in those
few minutes she had planned with Abby for a repast worthy the event.
The larder of the Ladd homestead was kept victualled beyond peril of
any surprise; and Mistress Mehitable, for all her ethereal mould and
mien, believed in the efficacy of good eating and good drinking. Well
regulated lives, she held, should also be well nourished, and her
Puritan conscience was not illiberal in regard to the seemly pleasures
of the board.
Both Doctor John and Doctor Jim, as befitted their stature, were
valiant trenchermen; and Robert was a boy; and the lavish delicacies of
Abby's serving met with that reception which was the best tribute to
their worth. Gaiety made herself handmaid to appetite; and the ale was
nutty-mellow from last October; and Mistress Mehitable's old Madeira
wine, of which herself partook but sparingly, was fiery-pungent on the
tongue. As she toasted him, and her blue eyes sparkled upon him over
the glass, Robert wondered anew how Barbara could have wanted to run
away from so admirable an aunt. As for Barbara, reduced for a little
to silence by supreme content, she sipped at her Angelica cordial,
surveyed Mistress Mehitable with grateful ardour, and took it all as
largess to herself.
At last, with a happy sigh, she cried, "Oh, if only Uncle Bob could
have come in time for this!" And so electric with sympathy was the air
that on the word every eye turned and glanced at the door, as if
expecting that a wish so well-timed might bring fruition on the
instant. There was silence for some seconds.
Then Mistress Mehitable said, "He will be here in a very few days,
dear! And then you, Robert, must come to us again without delay. I
agree with Barbara that nothing I can think of except Mr. Glenowen's
presence could add to our happiness to-night!"
After supper there was music in the candle-lit drawing-room, Mistress
Mehitable having a rare gift for the harpsichord, and Doctor Jim a nice
art in the rendering of certain old English ballads of the robuster
sort. Where they might have seemed to the ladies' ears a trifle more
robust than nice, Doctor Jim had fined them down to a fitting delicacy.
But they suited his rolling bass, and he loved them because, being
Cavalier-born, they appealed to his king-loving sympathies. Doctor Jim
was an exemplary Congregationalist, but solely by force of environment,
Congregationalism being the creed of all the gentry of that region.
Episcopalianism he looked upon with a distrust mingled with affection;
but in all other respects he was a king's man, through and through, an
aristocrat, and a good-natured scorner of the masses. It was a
stupendous triumph for accident and atmosphere to have succeeded in
fitting Doctor Jim to his inherited environment of Second Westings.
His Congregationalism was a thing that might conceivably be changed to
meet changed conditions; while his Toryism was bred in the bone. With
Mistress Mehitable, on the other hand, her Congregationalism was
deep-rooted, a matter of conscience. It was by conscience, too, no
less than by blood, that she was an aristocrat. She was a royalist, a
Tory, no less unquestioning than Doctor Jim, but this by a chance
election of that strenuous conscience which, by a different chance
twist, would have made her an equally sincere Whig.
When Doctor Jim had sung till Doctor John told him he was getting
hoarse and spoiling his voice, Barbara, in a burst of daring, started
up a wild plantation song, patting her accompaniment. To Mistress
Mehitable, as to Robert, this was an undreamed novelty, and their eyes
opened wide in wonder. At first they thought it barbarous, but in a
few minutes the piquing rhythms and irresponsible cadences caught them,
and they listened in rapture. Barbara's store of these songs was a
rich one, and she had perfected the rendering in many a secret
performance to the audience of Doctor John and Doctor Jim. When she
was quite sure of the effect she was producing, she sprang to her feet,
flung her hair loose by a quick movement of both hands, and began to
dance as she sang. And now, to the ever-growing amazement of Mistress
Mehitable, Doctor Jim took up the patting, while Doctor John, seating
himself at the harpsichord, began a strange staccato picking of the
keys. Then Barbara stopped singing, and gave herself up wholly to the
dance. She danced with arms and hands and head and feet, and every
slender curve of her young body. She moved like flames. Her eyes and
lips and teeth were a radiance through the live, streaming darknesses
of her hair. Light, swift, unerring, ecstatic, it was like the most
impassioned of bird-songs translated into terms of pure motion. Doctor
John played faster and faster his wild, monotonous melody. Doctor Jim
patted harder and harder. Barbara's dance grew madder and stranger,
till at last, with a little breathless cry that was half a sob, she
stopped, darted across the room, flung herself down, and buried her
dishevelled head in Mistress Mehitable's lap.
On ordinary occasions Mistress Mehitable would have felt inclined to
hold that anything so extraordinary, so utterly outside the range of
all conceptions, and at the same time so very beautiful, must be wrong.
Now, however, she was under the spell of Barbara and under the spell of
the whole situation. "I cannot see any possible harm in it!" she said
to herself. And to Barbara she said, tenderly and deftly arranging the
disordered locks:
"Most beautiful, and most singular, dear. I suppose that is your
_dance_ of 'Maryland Memories,' is it not? It seems to me not only
amazingly beautiful, but as if it might be the most wholesome and
desirable of exercises."
Barbara gurgled a gasping laugh from the depths of Mistress Mehitable's
taffeta. It had never occurred to her that these mad negro dances, in
which she found expression for so much in herself which she did not
understand, could be regarded in the light of exercise. But she was
glad indeed if they could be so regarded by Aunt Hitty.
"Oh, yes, honey," she agreed, in haste. "I'm _sure_ it's wholesome;
and I _know_ it's _desirable_,--isn't it?"
This appeal was to every one, but it was Robert, at last awaking from
his rapture and finding breath, who answered:
"There was never anything else so wonderful in all the world," he said,
solemnly.
Doctor John and Doctor Jim, with one impulse, jumped up, each seized
one of Barbara's hands, and plucked her to her feet. They then stood
hand in hand in a row before Mistress Mehitable and Robert, bowing
their thanks for such appreciation of their poor efforts to please.
"We are going to London to perform before the king!" declared Doctor
Jim.
Mistress Mehitable gravely took a shilling from her purse, and bestowed
it upon Doctor John because he was the tallest. He pretended to spit
on it, for luck, but kissed it instead, and slipped it into the bosom
of his ruffled shirt. When the approving laughter had subsided,
Mistress Mehitable said, musingly:
"I see now how you have been teaching Barbara her Latin. It was that
peculiar dialect of Latin that prevails in Maryland!"
After this a sack posset was mixed by Mistress Mehitable, with the
eager assistance of every one but Robert, who was still too much
possessed by Barbara's dancing to do more than stand about and get in
the way, and smile a gravely fatuous smile whenever spoken to.
When the posset began to go around, calling forth encomiums at every
sip, Doctor Jim demanded the cards. There was silence. To Robert,
just from the Tory circles of New York, it seemed the most natural
thing in the world. To Barbara it seemed natural, but foreign to
Mistress Mehitable and Second Westings. To Doctor John it seemed right
and desirable, but he chuckled and said nothing, being aware of
Mistress Mehitable's views. And this time Mistress Mehitable was firm.
"No, Jim," said she, "we won't play. I know good people do
play,--people who know just as well as I do what is right and what is
wrong. But for some reason card-playing does not seem right to me.
You know Doctor Sawyer would strongly disapprove!"
"Officially, that's all, dear lady!" corrected Doctor John.
"But you have them in the house,--yonder in that very drawer, most
gracious mistress!" persisted Doctor Jim.
"My dear father used them," confessed Mistress Mehitable. "Therefore I
would not for a moment think of refusing to have them in my house. But
I think it is better not to play, Jim."
And though Mistress Mehitable spoke with appeal and apology rather than
with decision, the matter was plainly settled. There was nothing to do
but tell riddles and drink up the rest of the posset. The pervading
satisfaction was in no way checked by Doctor Jim's failure, for all
agreed that cards were stupid anyway. Barbara, in spite of her
excitement, and to her intense self-disgust, began to grow sleepy. She
was horribly afraid she might show it, which, for one but forty-eight
hours grown-up, would have been humiliating beyond words. She felt
herself divided between a fear lest so perfect an evening should end
too soon, and an equally harassing fear lest it should end not soon
enough. At length the keen and loving eyes of Doctor John discerned
her trouble; and at the dissolute hour of half-past ten he broke up the
party. Adieux were made with a warmth, an abandon of homage held in
fetters of elaborate courtliness, which might have seemed excessive at
a less propitious conjunction of time and sentiment. At last the
three, Doctor John, Doctor Jim, and Robert, found themselves arm-in-arm
on the street, and all talking at once, overbrimming with happiness and
reciprocal congratulations, as they took their discreet way homeward.
Barbara and Mistress Mehitable, left alone, silently put out the
lights. Then, each lighting her candle, they paused at the head of the
stairs to say good night. Each set down her candle on the little
mahogany table under the clock, and looked into the other's eyes.
Barbara was first to break the sweet but too searching scrutiny. She
flung both arms around Mistress Mehitable's neck, and kissed her with a
tremulous fervour that told much. Mistress Mehitable, whose eyes were
brighter than Barbara had ever guessed that they could be, pressed her
in a close embrace which concealed much, even from Mistress Mehitable
herself. Then Barbara, after whispering something to the kittens, went
straight to bed, and straight to sleep. But Mistress Mehitable sat
looking out of her window.