Barbara Ladd. Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

CHAPTER V.

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      It was without misgiving that old Debby left the child to the healing of the solitude and the sun, the little wholesome responsibility, the unexacting companionship of the cat and the fowls. (This was before the day of the yellow pup, which did not come upon the scene until the following summer.) She had already learned that Barbara's promise was a thing to depend upon; and she felt that Barbara's heart would now be medicined more sweetly by silence than by words.

      The problem to whose solution the dauntless old woman had set herself was that of getting Barbara back to her aunt's house on terms that should ward off any further discipline. With this end in view she turned, as a matter of course, to Doctor Jim Pigeon. Debby's position in Second Westings was theoretically that of an outlaw. She had a mysterious past. She was obstinately refractory about going to meeting. Without actually defying the authorities, she would quietly and unobtrusively go her own way in regard to many matters which Second Westings accounted momentous. Moreover, she was lamentably lacking in that subservience to her betters which the aristocracy of Second Westings held becoming. And she had knowledge that savoured of witchcraft. She would certainly have felt the heavy hand of correction more than once, and probably have been driven to seek a more humane environment, but for the staunch befriending of Doctor Jim. Something in the old woman's fearless independence appealed to both the big, loud-voiced, soft-hearted brothers—but to Doctor Jim in particular. He in particular came to perceive her clear common sense, to appreciate the loyal and humane heart that lurked within her acrid personality. He openly showed his favour, and stood between her and persecution, till Second Westings taught itself to regard her offences as privileged. So, though an outlaw, she became a useful and tolerated one. She served surpassingly to point a moral in family admonitions. She was much in favour as a bogy to frighten crying children into silence. And furthermore, when deadly sickness chanced to fall upon a household, and skilled help was lacking, and self-righteous prejudice melted away in the crucible of anguish, then old Debby was wont to appear unsummoned and work marvels by the magic of her nursing. Doctor Jim had been known to declare defiantly that Debby Blue's nursing had saved patients whom all his medicines could not cure,—whereto Doctor John had retorted, with brotherly sarcasm, "In spite of your medicines, Jim—in spite СКАЧАТЬ