In a few minutes the canoe was fairly out upon the bosom of the main stream, and headed downward with the strongly flowing current. Barbara clasped her hands with a movement which expressed such rapture and relief that the boy's curiosity was excited. He began to feel that there was some mystery in the affair. Slackening his pace ever so slightly, he remarked:
"I suppose you are staying with friends somewhere in this neighbourhood. How fortunate I am – that is, if you will graciously permit me to go canoeing with you often while you are here."
But even as he spoke, his eyes took in, for the first time, the significance of the bundle and the basket, which he had been so far too occupied to notice. His wonder came forward and spoke plainly from his frank eyes, and Barbara was at a loss to explain.
"No," she said, "I am not staying anywhere in this neighbourhood. I don't know a soul in this neighbourhood but you."
"Then – you've come right from Second Westings!" he exclaimed.
"Right from Second Westings."
"All that distance since this morning?" he persisted.
She nodded impatiently.
"Through those woods – through the rapids – all alone?"
"Yes, all alone!" she answered, a little crisply. She was annoyed.
In his astonishment he laid down his paddle and leaned forward, scanning her face.
"But – " said he, embarrassed, "forgive me! I know it is none of my business, – but what does it mean?"
"Go on paddling," commanded Barbara. "Did you not promise you would obey me? I know what it means!" And she laughed, half maliciously. The boy looked worried, – and it was great fun to bring that worried look to his face.
He resumed his paddling, though much less vigorously, while she evaded his gaze, and a wilful smile clung about her lips. The current was swift, and they had soon left the imposing white columns of Gault House far behind. A tremendous sense of responsibility came over the boy, and again he stopped paddling.
"Oh, perhaps you are tired!" suggested Barbara, coolly. "Give me the paddle, and I'll set you ashore right here."
"I said just now it was none of my business," said he, gravely, appealingly, "but, do you know, I think perhaps it ought to be my business! I ought to ask!"
He retained the paddle, but turned the canoe's head up-stream and held it steady.
"What do you mean?" demanded Barbara, angrily. "Give me the paddle at once!"
Still he made no motion to obey.
"Do you realise," he asked, "that it's now near sundown, – that it will take till dark to work back against the current to where I met you, – that there's no place near here where a lady can rest for the night – "
"I don't care," interrupted Barbara hotly, ready to cry with anger and anxiety; "I'm going to travel all night. I'm going to the sea – to my uncle at Stratford! I just don't want you to interfere. Let me put you ashore at once!"
Robert was struck dumb with amazement. To the sea! This small girl, all alone! And evidently quite unacquainted with the perils of the river. It was superb pluck, – but it was wild, impossible folly. He did not know what to do. He turned the canoe toward shore, and presently found himself in quieter water, out of the current.
Observing his ready obedience, Barbara was mollified; but at the same time she was conscious of a sinking of the heart because he was going to leave her alone, when it would soon be dark. She had not considered, hitherto, this necessity of travelling in the dark. She made up her mind to tell the nice boy everything, and get him to advise her as to where she could stay for the night.
"I'm running away, you know, Master Gault," she said, sweetly, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
"Are you at all acquainted with the river?" he asked, gently, without a trace of resentment for the way she had spoken to him a moment before.
"No!" confessed Barbara, in a very small voice, deprecatingly.
"A few miles farther down there is a stretch of very bad water," said the boy. "Clever canoeist as you are, you would find it hard enough work going through in broad daylight. At night you would just be dashed to pieces in a minute."
"Oh, what shall I do?" cried Barbara, the perils of her adventure just beginning to touch her imagination.
"Let me take you to my grandmother's," he pleaded. "And we will paddle back to Second Westings to-morrow."
Barbara burst into a storm of tears.
"Never! never! never!" she sobbed. "I'll die in the rapids before I'll ever go back to Aunt Hitty! Oh, why did I like you? Why did I trust you? Oh, I don't know what to do!"
The boy's heart came into his throat and ached at the sight of her trouble. He longed desperately to help her. He had a wild impulse to swear that he would follow her and protect her, wherever she wanted to go, however impossible her undertaking. Instead of that, however, he kept silence and paddled forward resolutely for two or three minutes, while Barbara, her face buried in her hands, shook with sobs. At last he ran the canoe into a shadowy cove, where lily leaves floated on the unruffled water. Then he laid down his paddle.
"Tell me all about it, won't you, please?" he petitioned. "I do want so much to help you. And perhaps I can. And you shall not be sorry for trusting me!"
How very comforting his voice was! So tender, and kind, and with a faithful ring in its tenderness. Barbara suffered it to comfort her. Surely he would understand, if old Debby could! In a few moments she lifted her wet little face, flashed a smile at him through her tears, and said:
"How good and kind you are! Forgive me if I was bad to you. Yes, I'll tell you all about it, and then you can see for yourself why I had to come away."
Barbara's exposition was vivid and convincing. Her emotion, her utter sincerity, fused everything, and she had the gift of the telling phrase. What wonder if the serious, idealistic, chivalrous boy, upon whose nerves her fire and her alien, elusive beauty thrilled like wizard music, saw all the situation through her eyes. Her faults were invisible to him ere he had listened a minute to her narrative. She was right to run away. The venture, of course, was a mad one, but with his help it might well be carried through to success. As she talked on, an intoxication of enthusiasm and sympathy tingled along his blood and rose to his brain. Difficulties vanished, or displayed themselves to his deluded imagination only as obstacles which it would be splendid to overcome. In the ordinary affairs of life the boy was cool, judicious, reasonable, to a degree immeasurably beyond his years; but Barbara's strange magnetism had called forth the dreamer and the poet lurking at the foundations of his character; and his judgment, for the time, was overwhelmed. When Barbara's piercing eloquence ceased, and she paused breathless, eyes wide and lips parted in expectation, he said, solemnly:
"I will help you! To the utmost of my power I will help you!"
The words had the weight and significance of a consecration.
Barbara clapped her hands.
"Oh!" she cried, "How can I ever thank you for being so lovely to me? But I knew you were nice the moment I looked at you!" And a load rolled off her mind. With such a helper, already was her enterprise accomplished.
"I will try hard to be worthy of your favour," said Robert, with deep gravity, feeling that now indeed was boyhood put away and full manhood descended upon his shoulders. His brain was racked with the terrific problem of finding Barbara fit lodging for the night; but meantime he turned the canoe and paddled swiftly out into the current. Hardly had he changed his course when he noticed a light rowboat creeping up along the shore. But boats were no unusual sight on the river, and he paid no heed to it. As for Barbara, she was so absorbed in watching his great strokes, and in thinking how delightful it was to have found such an ally, that the sound of the oars passed her ears unheeded, and she did not turn her head.
CHAPTER IX
At length, however, the boy noticed with a tinge of surprise that the boat was steering as if to intercept his course. He was about to pass greeting to its occupants when something in the face of the big man sitting in the stern arrested his words. At the same moment the sound of the oars caught Barbara's attention, and she turned her head.
"Oh!" she cried, shrilly. "Doctor Jim! – and Doctor John!" she added, as one of the two rowers looked around and grinned at her in humourous triumph. Then, her visions of life at Stratford with Uncle Bob falling to ruin about her, she wept aloud in her disappointment.
Robert understood, and quick as thought swerved in his course, making a dart for the swifter water of mid-channel. His heart swelled with exultation.
"They can't catch us!" he declared to Barbara.
"Stop! you young rascal!" thundered the mighty voice of Doctor Jim. "I know you, Bobby Gault. Don't I know your father's son? Stop this instant!"
"Quit this tomfoolery, Bobby!" roared Doctor John, albeit a little breathless from his labour. Barbara lifted her face and stared through her tears. But the boy paid no heed, paddling mightily, and the distance between boat and canoe was surely widening.
But Doctor Jim knew Barbara.
"Very well!" he said, grimly, in a loud voice. "I'm sorry to do bodily hurt to the son of my old friend Richard, but it can't be helped."
He drew a long-barrelled pistol from under the flap of his green coat.
"I'll have to wing you, my boy!" he said, taking careful aim, while one eyelid quivered in the direction of Doctor John.
The boy's face paled a little, but his jaw set firmly, and he kept right on.
"Stop! stop! stop!" screamed Barbara, but with no result. She half arose in the canoe, glancing with horror from the boy's resolute face to the muzzle of the pistol.
"If you don't stop, Robert, I will throw myself overboard this minute!" she vowed.
The terror in her face convinced him. He sullenly drew in his paddle, laid it down in the canoe, folded his arms, and looked off over the western hills, as if scornful of all that might take place.
In a few seconds the boat came up alongside of the drifting canoe, the oars were drawn in, and strong hands laid hold upon the gunwale. There were some awful moments of silence, broken only by Barbara's sobbing and the splashing of waves on the boat and the canoe. The owner of the boat, a gaunt farmer from Westings Landing, a few miles down the river, who had not been initiated into the mystery, looked on in discreet astonishment. This was indeed a strange situation in which to see the grandson of Lady Gault. At last Barbara, to whom suspense was hideous, broke out.
"Oh, do say something!" she wailed. Indeed, neither Doctor John nor Doctor Jim knew just what to say. They were embarrassed. But the child was right. Somebody had to say something. By interchange of quick glances the lot fell to Doctor John.
"Well, this is pretty gallivanting, running away with a young man, – carrying him off in your aunt's canoe!" said Doctor John.
Barbara's eyes opened very wide.
"I never!" she cried, indignantly.
"As for you, Bobby Gault," interposed Doctor Jim, severely, and in a tone that made Robert feel himself hatefully young, "I cannot comprehend how you should come to be mixed up in this affair. I know well what my friend, Richard Gault, your lamented father, with his nice notions of honour, would have thought of such an escapade." (Robert's father and mother had died within a few days of each other, by an epidemic of typhus, when the boy was only five years old.) "But I shall lay the matter before your good grandmother, and your uncle, who will doubtless deal with you as you deserve."
Robert shut his lips tight and eyed the speaker proudly; but Barbara made reply in her vehement way.
"It is not Robert's fault at all, I tell you, Doctor Jim!" she cried, forgetting that she had said nothing whatever on the subject. "I just met him, an hour or two ago, on an old raft; and he knew who I was; and because he was getting his feet wet on the raft, I invited him to get into the canoe; and I made him promise to paddle me just wherever I wanted to go. So there! And it is not his fault one bit! And you may do what you like to me, but I won't have him punished when he has not done anything at all!"
Doctor John tried to look quite grave; and Doctor Jim, who was really annoyed, succeeded.
"Oh, ho! young man!" he remarked, sarcastically, "it appears that you have a champion. Now, what have you to say for yourself?"
"Mistress Barbara has neglected to add," said he, with all the dignity that he could assume, "that I insisted upon her narrating to me all the unhappy circumstances of her life in Second Westings. The story commanded my fullest sympathy, and I had just given her my word that I would aid her in escaping to her uncle, Mr. Glenowen, where she would be happy, when you came and violently interfered with her purpose. I ask you, sir, to consider. Are you not ashamed to be instrumental in restoring a young lady to conditions where she has been made to suffer so cruelly?"
In spite of his indignation, Robert could not help feeling proud of this effort. In his own ears it sounded imposing, unanswerable, and altogether grown up. Barbara thought it was a miracle of eloquence, and cast him a grateful look. But Doctor John could not conceal his delight in the stilted periods. He burst into a huge guffaw, at which Barbara's eyes snapped and Robert's dark skin reddened angrily. But Doctor Jim exclaimed, hotly:
"Hoity-toity! How big we do feel! To think how often I dandled you on my knee when you were a mewling baby. If I had but known enough to spank you once in awhile, you might not have grown up to be such a priggish young coxcomb. Richard's son! Who would have thought it? Eh, what?"
Meanwhile the boat and canoe were drifting rapidly down-stream. Doctor John looked at the sun, now touching the horizon.
"Don't you think, Master Gault," said he, drily, "that unless you propose to honour us with your company to Second Westings, we had better set you ashore hereabouts, that you may stretch your legs in the direction of Gault House?"
"Thank you!" said Robert, stiffly, his heart bursting with humiliation and the longing to strangle his huge, supercilious antagonist. But Barbara interrupted.
"I'm not going back to Second Westings!" she declared obstinately, trying hard to set her full red lips together in the resolute way that Robert's had. "I will never go back to live with Aunt Hitty. I'll drown myself first. I'm going to Uncle Bob, at Stratford."
The threat, once so effective, seemed now to have lost its potency. No one appeared impressed but Robert, – and perhaps the stranger-man who owned the boat.
"My dear child," said Doctor John, eying her indulgently, "among the more or less serious obstacles to your plan is one of which I believe that even you will see the magnitude. Mr. Glenowen is no longer at Stratford."
"Uncle Bob not at Stratford?" wailed Barbara, overwhelmed, subjugated in an instant. Robert started aghast.
Doctor John paused dramatically, while the full effect of the news worked upon his victims in the canoe. Then he said, coolly:
"Mr. Glenowen is just now at Hartford, or has lately left that town. Mistress Ladd had a letter from him to-day, saying he expected to arrive at Second Westings not later than the end of next week, I think, moreover, that I saw a packet on the mantel-shelf addressed to Mistress Barbara Ladd!"
With one bound Barbara's heart passed from despair to ecstasy. Everything else was forgotten. She was as eager now to get back to Second Westings as she had been to escape from it. All she knew or cared for was that Uncle Bob would be there. He would make everything right. Her face was all radiance, as it turned to Doctor John, then to Doctor Jim, then to Robert, – who eyed her gloomily, feeling himself now cast out into the cold. But in her joy Barbara did not forget him after all.
"Just think, Robert," she cried, "Uncle Bob so near, and we would have missed him if Doctor John and Doctor Jim, the dears, had not come and caught us. They are always angels to me, you know. Now we will put you ashore right here. And you must be sure to come over to Second Westings and see me, – won't you? – while Uncle Bob is there. Come next week."
"I thank you for the gracious invitation," answered the boy, bowing a little stiffly. "But I think I had better wait for Mr. Glenowen's permission, as these gentlemen are not likely to present me to him in a very favourable light."
"Don't be silly and disagreeable, Robert," said Barbara, impatiently. "Uncle Bob will think of you just as I do. We always agree about people. Now you must hurry!"
"I think, however," persisted Robert, "I ought to wait for Mr. Glenowen's invitation."
"Right, my lad!" exclaimed Doctor Jim, much mollified by this attitude. "That's my old friend Richard's son speaking now. And I doubt not that our little mistress here will see to it that the invitation is forthcoming in good season, – eh, what?"
There was a doubtful expression on Barbara's face, over the lack of instantaneous obedience to her will on the part of her champion; but Robert, encouraged by Doctor Jim's commendation, now made a bold proposal.
"If you would be so kind, sir," he suggested, diffidently, "I should like to go down with you to the Landing, where I can lodge very well for the night at the house of an old servant of my grandmother's. It will be a long and difficult tramp for me up the shore now, in the dark, and with no road through the woods. By going with you to the Landing I might be of some service, to paddle the canoe. She will be an awkward craft to tow; and Mistress Barbara is very tired, I perceive."
"Sly young dog!" growled Doctor John. "But, seeing that he is Richard's son, we'll have to take him along with us as far as the Landing, eh, Jim?"
"Let him work his passage, then!" roared Doctor Jim. "Let him paddle the canoe, and Barbara, and her kittens, and all her contraptions, – and we'll see about not being too hard on him when we come to tell his grandmother!"
This arrangement was highly satisfactory to all concerned. The gloom fell from Robert's face, and his mouth grew boyish and happy as he paddled on in musing silence. He kept the canoe alongside of the boat, just out of reach of the oars, so that Barbara could talk conveniently with Doctor John and Doctor Jim, which she did in the most usual manner in the world, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. But presently, upon a lull in the conversation came the voice of Robert, who had been thinking about Barbara's life at Second Westings.
"Is not Mistress Ladd a very harsh, tyrannical sort of woman?" he inquired, solicitously.
There was a huge roar from Doctor Jim, which made even Barbara jump, inured though she was to these explosions.
"I'd have you remember, young sir, that you are speaking of the gentlest, sweetest, truest, most gracious lady that ever lived, for whose little shoes you are not worthy to sweep the ground!"
Robert stared in confusion, too astonished to be at once ready with an apology. Before he could gather his wits, Doctor John spoke up, more gently. He was no less loyal a champion to Mistress Mehitable than was Doctor Jim, but with him his humour was ever at hand to assuage his wrath. Subduing his great tones to a quizzical and confidential half-whisper, that feigned itself not meant for Barbara's ears, he said, amiably:
"My son, when you come to know well this little firebrand of ours, whom we have just plucked from a watery burning, this sower of dissension in our good village of Second Westings, I doubt not that you will spare a moiety of your sympathies for that very noble lady, Mistress Ladd. In truth, for all her tears and anxiety on this mad little maid's account, I have a misgiving that we are doing the sweet lady no great kindness in taking Mistress Barbara back to her. A pretty gallant you are, to undertake to carry a lady off, and then make a mess of it, and leave her embarrassed friends to straighten out the snarl!"
Under this daunting blend of rebuke and raillery, Robert fell into a deeper confusion. He floundered through a few awkward phrases of deprecation and apology, but Barbara cut in upon his struggles without mercy. The gibes of Doctor John troubled her not a whit, but one thing which he had said captured her interest.
"Did Aunt Hitty really cry when she found I had gone away? Did she really feel so badly about it? I thought she would be rather glad!"
"She was in great grief, bitter grief, Barbara. Do you think no one has feelings but yourself?" answered Doctor Jim, with some severity.
This pertinent question Barbara ignored. She turned to Robert.
"You must understand, Robert," she explained with care, "that Aunt Hitty is not really cruel to me, – at least she never intends to be. But she and I do not understand each other, and so we can't get on!"
"You will simply have to learn some of the rudiments of obedience and self-control, Barbara," said Doctor Jim. Never had he spoken to her so severely before, and she was amazed. But she saw that this time she had gone very near to forfeiting the sympathy of her most faithful allies. Perhaps, after all, she was in the wrong to run away. The suspicion only made her the more obstinate.
"I don't think one ought to obey any one, except one's father and mother," she proclaimed rebelliously. "One's father and mother, if they are good, and wise, and kind," she added, still further enlarging her freedom.
"And the king!" added Robert, sententiously. He flung out the word as a shibboleth.
There was a moment of silence. Barbara darted upon him a glance of petulant disappointment. Doctor John laughed hugely. But as for Doctor Jim, his face underwent a swift change, as he scanned the boy with new interest.
"Well said, well said; spoken as Richard's boy should speak, as a Gault should ever speak!" he thundered, in high approval. "I am sorry if I seemed abrupt a moment ago, Robert. Pardon my quick temper. I see your heart is in the right place, and you have not let them stuff your head with pestilent and plebeian heresies. Yes, yes, you must certainly come to Second Westings. I shall be honoured if my old friend's son will be my guest!"
From that moment dated a friendship between Robert and Doctor Jim which no after vicissitude was ever able to disturb.
But Barbara was of another mind.
"King George is just a stupid old tyrant, and I hate him!" she exclaimed. "I'm sorry, Robert, you have not quite so much sense as I thought you had. I'm really disappointed in you. But there are some nice Tories! You know even dear Doctor Jim is a Tory, though we can't see why, and he's just as lovely as if he were on the right side. So you may come to Second Westings, – though you must promise not to argue with me. But I know, Robert, I sha'n't like you now so well as I thought I was going to!"
"Let the young people fight it out, eh, Jim?" said Doctor John, greatly amused. "Let them fight it out between them!" Then, suddenly grave, he added, "God grant the differences now distracting our colonies grow not beyond the point of children's quarrels!"
Doctor Jim shook his head sorrowfully.
"There's trouble ahead, John. I feel it coming. This is a stiff-necked and disloyal people, and I have a foreboding. There's a sword in the air, John!"
"It's surely a stiff-necked king, Jim," muttered Doctor John.
"The sword of a Gault will ever leap from its scabbard to serve the king!" said Robert, loftily, his grave eyes aglow with exaltation.
As he made this proclamation of his faith, devoting himself to a cause of which she disapproved, and quite ignoring her feelings in the matter, Barbara felt a sudden pang of loneliness. She seemed forgotten, or, at least, grown secondary and trivial.
"Do let us hurry home to Uncle Bob!" she pleaded, her voice pathetic, her eyes tired and dissatisfied.
Then silence, with the twilight, descended upon the voyaging company; and in a little while, coming noiselessly to the landing-place, they stepped ashore into the dewy, sweet-smelling weeds and the evening peace.
CHAPTER X
A green lane, little used, but deeply rutted, led up from the wharf to the main street of Westings Landing. The village was silent, with no sign of life, except here and there a glimmer from a candle-lit window. From the pale sky overhead came the strange twang of swooping night-hawks, as of harp-strings suddenly but firmly plucked. In the intervals between these irregular and always unexpected notes was heard the persistent rhythm of a whippoorwill, softly threshing the dusk with his phantom song. Barbara felt the whole scene to be unreal, her companions unreal, herself most unreal of all. Could it be that she was the girl who had that same morning run away, that same morning made so brave and triumphant a start upon so splendid a venture? Now, somehow, she felt rather than understood the folly of it. The fact that she would have missed her Uncle Bob if she had succeeded in her plan took out of it all the zest, and it became to her a very ridiculous plan indeed. But her change of attitude was emotional rather than intellectual. She was convinced in mood, not in mind. Only she felt herself on the sudden a very small, tired girl, who deserved to be punished, and wanted to go to bed. Her conviction of childishness was heightened by the fact that Robert, who was walking just ahead with Doctor Jim, in grave discussion, seemed not only to have suddenly grown up, but to have quite forgotten her once imperious but now discredited existence. Her exhaustion, her reaction, her defeat, her disappointment in Robert, these all at once translated themselves into a sense of hopeless loneliness. She seized the large, kind hand of Doctor John, who walked in silence by her side, and clung to him.
