IT was well on toward evening before Barbara found herself watching
with strained attention for the return of David. Late in the afternoon
she had been visited with tardy contrition, which concerned itself more
particularly with the coldness of her refusal to accompany him. For
the moment she refused to go deeper, and consoled herself with careful
preparation for supper. She would urge David to stay, she told herself;
he would be hungry after the long drive. But at twilight the delicate
biscuit and boiled ham, that David loved, and the yellow squares of
sponge cake and the rich home-made preserves, which he had approved,
were all ready. The small round table was set daintily for three, with
shining silver and napery and the long-cherished pink china.
The sun had set cold and still after a brilliant day of high winds
and flying clouds, and the big yellow moon slowly shouldering itself
from behind the dark woods looked in at her festal preparations like
an inquisitive face. Barbara shivered a little in her loneliness;
then thinking still of the belated merry-makers, she fetched firewood
and kindled a blaze on the hearth. The leaping light flickered over
the waiting table and cast warm, life-like reflections on the dim old
portraits on the wall.
They would surely come soon, she concluded, with a glance at the
tall clock in the corner. But this faithful monitor of dead and
gone generations of Prestons presently became quite intolerable, so
loudly did it proclaim the lagging minutes. There seemed to be vague
stirrings, too, in the shadows, like whispers sunk below the rim of
sound. The painted eyes of father and grandfather, preternaturally wise
in their perpetual mute observance, appeared to be pitying her young
ignorance. They drove her forth at length into the chill of the autumn
moonlight. Down by the stone gateway she could see the empty road
winding away into obscurity on either hand, like a gray ribbon unbound
and flung carelessly across the valley. A faint wind shook gusts of
fragrance from the cone-laden pines, and away off among the orchards a
little brown owl gurgled a mocking defiance to the moon.
She would have said, perhaps, that she was worried because David had
not brought Jimmy home early, as he had promised. The child would
be cold, hungry, tired; his little jacket was too thin; his limbs
unprotected; but beneath these quasi-maternal misgivings lurked a
keener anxiety, a more consuming fear. This it was that held her there,
listening, listening—her whole being an insistent question, which would
not be denied. This clamorous doubt had long been slowly growing in the
mind which lies directly beneath consciousness, stirring now and again,
like a child unborn, to lapse once more into quiescence. To-night,
grown big and lusty, it thrust itself upon her, a full-grown conviction.
She could have told no one, least of all herself, how long she remained
alone in the wan darkness, fighting her losing battle; but her hair
and clothing were wet with frosty dew when at last she heard in the
far distance the unbroken beat of hoofs. It was a fast horse, driven
at furious speed; yet long before the vehicle drew up with a muttered
exclamation from its occupant, at sight of her standing there in the
moonlight, she knew it was not David.
“I’ve got the boy here, and he’s all right,” Jarvis said. “Get in and
I’ll—explain.”
But he said nothing further in the brief interval that elapsed before
they reached the house. Barbara had drawn the sleeping child into her
arms, and held him jealously close to her numbed breast. She felt
strangely still, unnaturally composed, as Jarvis took the child from
her and helped her to alight.
“I’m coming in,” he said. “I want to tell you how it happened that I am
bringing him home.”
“Is David——?” she managed to articulate.
“Oh, nothing has happened to Whitcomb—no accident, I mean. Go in;
you’re chilled through.”
She had taken off Jimmy’s coat and cap, and the child, half awake, was
nestled in her arms, when Jarvis followed her into the lighted room,
with its table daintily set for three, and its cheer of burning logs,
which Barbara had stirred to a blaze.
She looked at him in piteous silence as he stood, a tall, sombre
figure at her fireside, looking down at her with eyes full of a
brooding tenderness of which he was only half aware. He was anxiously
searching for words which would hurt least; for a balm of comfort
which, he knew, did not exist.
Jimmy, rubbing the sleep out of his brown eyes, sat up suddenly in
Barbara’s lap.
“David didn’t let me stay wiv him,” he quavered. “He—he made me det out
’n’—’n’ he dave me some money; ’n’ a big boy pushed me over and took
it away. I ran after David ’n’ called him loud; but he didn’t hear me.
’Nen I got lost.”
“I found him,” said Jarvis, “asleep on some straw in the comer of an
empty stall.”
He smiled reassuringly at Barbara.
“The boy appears to need a general washing and putting to rights, I
should say; but he isn’t hungry.”
“Where,” asked Barbara, in a stifled voice, “is David?”
“He’s gone wiv the pretty lady, I guess,” said Jimmy sleepily. “She had
roses in her hat. Why don’t you have roses in your hat, Barbara? I like
roses.”
The little boy suddenly opened his eyes very wide; his mouth followed
suit.
“Look, Barb’ra,” he shrilled excitedly. “A man dave me a sausage in
the middle of a biscuit, ’n’ I was awful hungry an’ I fordot—I mean I
forgot—t’ bite wiv my side teef—’n’—’n’—’n’ one o’ my front teef came
right out. I lost it on the ground.”
Barbara’s questioning eyes were on Jarvis’s face. He turned abruptly as
if unable to bear them.
“I called loud to David; but he was drinkin’ somethin’ brown out of a
tumbler ’n’ he didn’t turn around,” chattered Jimmy, “but the lady, she
looked at me, ’n’ she said——”
He broke into a nervous laugh.
“It feels funny in my mouf,” he complained. “Will my new toof come in
right away? Will it, Barbara?”
Jarvis drew a deep breath.
“If you’ll put the boy to bed,” he said, “I’ll—wait.”
He sat down by the fire, a grim look of patient endurance on his face.
In the room above he could hear the light tread of Barbara’s feet, and
Jimmy’s high, childish treble upraised in excited speech.
“He’s telling her all he knows,” muttered Jarvis, a sick distaste for
his own hateful task coming over him.
It was long before Barbara returned. Jarvis had decided that she wished
him to go away without speaking, when he heard her re-enter the room.
He sprang to his feet.
“Sit down, won’t you? And let me—explain.”
Barbara lifted her head proudly.
“I think I—understand,” she said.
He gazed steadily at her, a frown of pain between his brows.
“I have known for a long time,” she went on, “that it was all a
dreadful mistake; that he—did not love me.”
“And you?” leaped from his guarded lips.
She looked away, a slow crimson staining her white cheeks.
“I could not bear it, if——” she murmured, and was silent.
“I hope you will believe me,” Jarvis said gravely, “when I tell you
that what took place was not intentional on Whitcomb’s part. I know
him, perhaps, better than you think.”
A shadowy smile touched Barbara’s tense mouth.
“Nothing—was ever—intentional with David,” she said.
After a long silence she looked up at him, her eyes dry and bright.
“Will you tell me,” she asked, “just what happened?”
He drew a hardly controlled breath.
“I will tell you what I know,” he said reluctantly. But he seemed
unable to go on with his shameful story in the light of her proud eyes.
“I already know,” she said quietly, “that he abandoned Jimmy early in
the afternoon, and that later he was seen with——”
“The woman was a waitress at the Barford Eagle,” Jarvis admitted
reluctantly. “She has attended Whitcomb at table during his stay there;
and so, of course——”
“I know who the girl is,” Barbara told him, in a low, hurried voice.
“He met the young woman on the fair grounds quite by accident,” Jarvis
went on quickly. “You ought to believe that; and what followed was
also, I am convinced, wholly unpremeditated.”
“Well?” urged Barbara steadily.
Jarvis clenched his strong hands on his knees and bent forward to stare
frowningly into the fire.
“Whitcomb backed his own horse heavily and won,” he said slowly.
“Shortly afterward an altercation arose between himself and—a young
man, who had previously been interested in the girl, Jennie Sawyer.
This person Bamber, became very abusive, and——”
Jarvis’s voice, which had been dry and caustic, as if he were reviewing
unsavory circumstantial evidence, suddenly broke.
“Barbara!” he cried. “My poor girl, must you hear it all?”
She was looking at him, her eyes burning beneath her long curved
lashes, the red of her under-lip caught in her white teeth.
“Go on,” she said quietly. “Someone will have to tell me. I—would
rather hear it from—you.”
The sweat of agony glistened on Jarvis’s forehead.
“If I must,” he said hoarsely. “It was an accident, Barbara. It would
never have happened if David had not been excited, wild with success;
Bamber attacked him first, without due provocation, it would seem, and
Whitcomb retaliated—struck him, in self-defence.”
Barbara heard his voice as if from a great distance. She seemed to
herself to be drifting away on a sea of strange dreams. Then she roused
suddenly to find herself supported by Jarvis’s arm. He was holding a
cup of water to her lips. She sat up, her face white and wan, her hands
clutching the arms of her chair.
“You were saying——” she murmured.
“I ought to have told you in the beginning,” he reproached himself,
“Bamber was not killed by the blow; but he fell and—struck his head
against the edge of a stall.”
“And David?” she breathed.
“The girl dragged him away from the scene of the accident, and
he—escaped. You know he had a fast horse.”
She was looking at him dizzily through a mist of pain.
“The girl went with him,” he said, reading aright the question in her
eyes. “There was talk of a pursuit, of an arrest. But unless Bamber
should—— I think I may assure you that David will not be molested.”
He did not tell her that he had used all the official power at his
command to shield the fugitives from the fury of the crowd, and further
that the injured man had already received the best medical attention
procurable in the county. Barbara learned these things long, long
afterward, when the pain of that hour had been assuaged.
* * * * *
It was more than three months afterward, and the first snow was flying
past the windows in big, feathery flakes, when a letter came to Barbara
from a town in the Far West. It was from David, she saw, with a painful
throb of surprise, and postponed the reading of it for a difficult
hour, during which she reviewed once more and for the last time all the
futile anguish and passion of a love that had bruised and hurt her from
its beginning. Then she opened the letter with fingers that trembled
not at all.
“Dear Barbara [he wrote]: I suppose by this time you have set me down
as a poor skate of a fellow. It probably hasn’t occurred to you that
it is entirely your own fault that you will never see me again. If you
had gone with me to the fair that day, as I wanted you to do, I should
not have met Jennie, nor gotten into a squabble with that unutterable
cad, Bamber. I hear he got off with nothing worse than a crack in his
foolish skull to remind him what it is like to try conclusions with a
gentleman.
“I want to tell you, Barbara, that I’ve married Jennie, and so far,
neither of us is sorry. She is a dear little wife, sweet-tempered,
and entirely devoted to your humble servant. And I don’t find myself
so deucedly uncomfortable in her company as you used to make me feel
sometimes. Let me tell you, Barbara, that you’ll never succeed in
making any man happy till you get off that high horse of yours and
stop trying to run the universe. But I don’t suppose you’ll care for
what I say, any more than you cared for me, and I don’t flatter myself
that was a little bit.
“Just one thing more before I say good-bye for always. If you want to
know who your master is, I’ll tell you. _It is old Jarvis._ I knew it
all along. But I let you go on deceiving yourself, since you seemed
to prefer doing it. You can settle it with him any way you see fit and
I shall be satisfied.
“With best wishes for your future happiness, I am, my dear Barbara,
Yours faithfully.
“DAVID WHITCOMB.”
Barbara read this letter once; then she thrust it deep down among the
burning logs and watched it blaze and shrivel into a black and scarlet
shred, which flitted stealthily up the chimney and out of sight, like a
wicked wraith.
She was still thinking soberly rather than sorrowfully of David, when
Jimmy dashed into the room, his yellow hair standing up around his rosy
face like a halo as he pulled off his warm cap and threw his books and
mittens on the table.
“What d’ you think, Barb’ra,” he exulted. “I had a reg’lar zamination
in my ’rithm’tic to-day, ’n’ I passed it a hunderd and fifty. My
teacher said I did. I did a whole lot o’ zamples an’ wrote out all the
sevens an’ eights an’ nines, an’ didn’ mix up seven times nine and
eight times eight, or anyfing—I mean any-th-ing.”
“You’re home early, aren’t you, precious?” asked Barbara, glancing at
the clock.
“Yes, ’course I am; I met Mr. Jarvis, Barb’ra. He was drivin’ that
horse wiv a short tail, ’n’—’n’ he asked me did I want to get in and
drive him, ’n’—’n’ he let me, Barb’ra; ’n’ I don’t believe that horse
cares if his tail is short. He’s comin’ in the house now.”
“Who—the horse?” asked Barbara, in pretended alarm.
“‘Course not!” shouted Jimmy, in fine scorn. “Mr. Jarvis is. He said he
was bringin’ you a book to read. I like Mr. Jarvis, don’t you, Barb’ra?
_Don’t_ you?”
Jarvis himself, entering at the moment, heard the little boy’s
insistent question. He stood before the fire, tall and grave, drawing
off his gloves and looking keenly at Barbara. She had grown only more
beautiful in his eyes, since the day when he had first noticed her
youthful loveliness, like a wind-blown spray of blossoms against a dark
sky. Now he perceived that something untoward had happened to disturb
the quiet friendship which had been slowly growing up between them
in the peace of the past months. Her candid eyes avoided his, and a
fluttering color came and went in her soft cheeks.
“What is it, Barbara?” he asked, when Jimmy had gone exultantly forth
to boast to Peg of his initial victory in the difficult warfare of
education.
“I have just been reading a letter—from David,” she said, without
attempt at postponement or evasion. “He is married.”
“Well?” said Jarvis gravely.
“I was glad to know that,” she went on. “I have been afraid—for that
poor girl.”
She was silent for a long minute, while the logs purred comfortably
together in the fireplace.
Then she met his questioning eyes, her own filled with a deep,
mysterious light.
“He told me what I had sometimes—thought might be true,” she hesitated;
“that you—were the unknown person, who—— that I really—belong to you.”
Then the significance of her words flashed over her, and her face
glowed with lovely shamed color.
“I am quite rich now,” she went on hurriedly, “and you must let me give
you—pay you——”
“I will, Barbara,” he said, with a quiet smile. “If you will only give
me—what you have acknowledged really belongs to me. Will you, Barbara?”
She turned to him, all her woman’s soul in her sweet eyes.
“To the highest bidder,” she murmured, and laid her hand in his.