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.
Presently Doctor John felt hot tears streaming copiously down his fingers. Without a word, he snatched her up into his arms, carrying her as if she were a baby; and shaking with voiceless sobs, she buried her small, wet face in his comforting neck. She felt as if she wanted to cry wildly, deliciously, for hours and hours. But she managed to remember that even a very small girl may be heavy to carry over a rough road in the dusk, when the man who carries her has had a hard day's work chasing her. And, furthermore, she thought how very, very little, how poor and pitiful a heroine she would seem in Robert's eyes if he should chance to remember her existence and look back! She pulled herself together with a fierce effort, and choked down her sobs.
"Thank you so much, dear Doctor John!" she whispered in his ear. "I'm better now, and you must put me down. I'm too heavy."
"Tut, tut, sweetheart!" growled Doctor John, softly; "you bide where you are, and rest. You heavy!"
"But,"—she persisted, with a little earthward wriggle to show she meant it,—"I want to get down now, please! I don't want to look like quite such a baby. Doctor John!"
"Tut, tut!" but he set her down, nevertheless, and kept comforting hold of one cold little hand. Doctor John was quick in his sympathetic comprehension of women and children, and tolerant of what most men would account mere whim. In a moment he leaned down close to her ear, and whispered:
"What are you but a baby, after all,—a tired out, bad baby, sweetheart? But we'll just keep that a secret between you and me, and not let Jim Pigeon or Master Robert even guess at it!" And Barbara squeezed his hand violently in both of hers by way of answer.
At this moment, Doctor Jim and Robert, reaching the corner of the street, turned and waited for them to come up. Doctor Jim had Barbara's precious basket of kittens on his arm, while Robert was carrying her little red bundle, which he now handed over to Doctor John. A certain reluctance with which he gave it up was quite lost upon Barbara in her unwonted humility and depression; and it was a very white, wistful little face which she turned glimmeringly upon him as he bowed over her hand.
"Why are you leaving us here, Robert?" she asked, in a small voice, most unlike the wilful tone with which she had talked to him in the canoe.
"My way lies down the street, sweet mistress," said the boy. "Your horses, Doctor Jim tells me, are waiting for you at the Blue Boar yonder. This has been a wonderful day for me. When you think of it, will you try to remember me kindly as one who would ever be your most devoted, humble servant?"
Delighted by this elaborate courtesy, so rehabilitating to her self-esteem, Barbara began to feel herself almost herself again. She thought, with a sudden prickling heat of shame, of how childish she had been during all the past year,—and she almost fifteen! And here was Robert, who was certainly very grown-up, treating her with a deference which he would never dream of paying to a mere little girl! She resolved to justify his deference, to conceal her pet childishnesses till time should mature them away; yet even as she registered this resolve, she registered a vague but deeper one, that she would cling for ever to every childish taste and pleasure in spite of the very utmost that time could do. But the feeling that came uppermost and found expression was a sharp little pang at something in his words which sounded as if he were bidding farewell for a long, indefinite time.
"But I shall see you again soon, sha'n't I, Robert?" she exclaimed, impulsively. "You'll come over to Second Westings right away, won't you, and meet Uncle Bob?"
"Yes," said the boy, bowing low again, and speaking with a mixture of hesitation and triumph, "I am promising myself that pleasure, Mistress Barbara, within a very few days. You see—Doctor Jim—he has been so kind—"
"To be sure," broke in Doctor Jim, with an emphasis to preclude any discussion of consistency,—"I've asked the lad over to visit us, John. Richard's son!— And his heart's in the right place,—and his head, too,—eh, what? We'll see that Mistress Mehitable is not too hard on him,—eh, what? You know you're not going to be too hard on the boy yourself, John Pigeon, for all you've been so uncommonly unpleasant to him!"
Doctor John chuckled softly, and squeezed Barbara's left hand, which he had retained while she was receiving Robert's adieux.
"Tut, tut, Jim! You know well enough we've got to pardon anything in breeches, young or old, that gets led into mischief by this little limb o' darkness here. It's a peck of trouble she's been getting you and me into, time and time again. You needn't make excuses for Robert to me, Jim Pigeon. At least, not yet!"
"Thank you, sir," said Robert, a little stiffly, not relishing a pleasantry at Barbara's expense, though Barbara herself had broken into a peal of gay laughter, flattered at Doctor John's implications, and comforted to know that Robert was not slipping beyond her reach. "Thank you, indeed, sir; but I have no excuse; I was fully committed to Mistress Barbara's venture, and I'm just as much to blame as she is!"
Barbara's heart glowed. This was the kind of unreasonable championship she adored. But truth compelled her to protest.
"Oh, no, no, Robert, not at all! It wasn't you that ran away from Aunt Hitty, and took the canoe, and persuaded a nice, civil gentleman whom you'd never seen before in your life to do a perfectly crazy thing like you read of in story-books—" But, as she paused for breath, Doctor Jim, too impatient to be amused, interrupted her:
"Well, well, Robert, you and Barbara can settle all that between you some other time. We must get away. Good night—good night. My best compliments to your honoured grandmother! And ride over the first day you can, lad!"
And Doctor John, shaking his head sorrowfully, exclaimed:
"Tut, tut, tut! How small a petticoat can turn how great a brain! I see trouble ahead for you, Bobby!"
"I shall be so glad to see you at my aunt's, Robert!" cried Barbara, over her shoulder, as they moved up the street toward the Blue Boar and the waiting horses. Robert, standing hat in hand, gazed after them till they were swallowed up in the shadows. Still he waited, till a pulse of light across the gloom and the sound of the inn door closing told him that he was alone under the night. Then, suddenly, he became conscious of the lonely, wonderful night sounds, and suddenly the night perfumes sank into his heart. The spicy breaths from the clover field and blossoming thicket, cooled with dew, gave him a strange intoxication as he drew them into the depths of his lungs. The pulsing rhythm of the whippoorwill seemed to time itself to the pulsing of his heart and translate it to the terms of an impassioned, inarticulate chant. The plucked harp-strings sounding from time to time in the hidden heights of the sky set all his nerves vibrating mystically. Walking as if in a dream, he came to the door of the cottage where he had planned to stay the night. Then he turned on a swift impulse, hurried back to the landing, launched Barbara's canoe, and, without consciousness of weariness or hunger, paddled all the way back to Gault House against the current.