CHAPTER XI.
From Second Westings that morning, after old Debby's alarm, Doctor John and Doctor Jim had came posthaste on horseback to Westings Landing. Now, however, it was found that Barbara was quite too worn out by the fatigues of her long, strenuous day to sit a horse for a ten mile's ride over rough roads in the dark. Priding herself not less on her endurance than on her horsemanship, she vehemently repudiated the charge that she was done up, and was determined to ride back on the liveliest of the Blue Boar's horses. But Doctor John and Doctor Jim, scanning critically her white face and the dark rims coming about her eyes, for once agreed in a professional judgment. They ordered the horses hitched to the roomy old chaise, which was one of the landlord's most cherished possessions; and Barbara had to accept, rebelliously enough, the supineness of a cushioned seat for the free lift and swing of the saddle. Before the lighted doorway of the inn was out of sight, however, she was glad of the decision. Her overwrought nerves began to relax under the soothing of the wood scents and the tender summer dark. In a little while she was asleep in the strong curve of Doctor Jim's right arm,—so deep asleep that all the ruts and jolts and corduroy bridges of an old Connecticut back-country road were powerless to disturb her peace. When they woke her up, at her aunt's door, she was so drenched with sleep that she forgot to dread the reckoning. With drowsy, dark eyes, and red mouth softly trustful as a baby's, she bewildered Mistress Ladd by a warm kiss and "I'm sorry, Aunt Hitty!" and went stumbling off to bed with her basket of sleeping kittens, oblivious and irresponsible as they.
Mistress Mehitable looked after her with small, stern mouth, but troubled eyes. Then she turned half helplessly to her friends, as if to say, "What can I—what ought I to do?"
Doctor John threw up both big, white hands in mock despair, and his sympathetic laugh said, "What do you expect?" But Doctor Jim, more direct and positive, said, "Best leave her alone till to-morrow, Mehitable; and then talk to her with no talk of punishing. She's not the breed that punishing's good for."
Mistress Mehitable looked sorrowful, but resolute.
"I fear that would not be right, Jim!" she said. But there was a note of deep anxiety in her voice. "People who do wrong ought to be punished. Barbara has done very, very wrong!"
Doctor Jim was as near feeling impatient as he could dare to imagine himself with Mistress Mehitable.
"Nonsense—I mean, dear lady, punishment's not in itself one of our numerous unpleasant duties. It's a means to an end, that's all. In this case, it just defeats your end. It's the wrong means altogether. Therefore—pardon me for saying it to you, Mehitable—it's wrong. It's hard enough to manage Barbara, I know, but to punish her, or talk to her of punishing, makes it harder still, eh, what?"
"Don't let your conscience trouble you, Mehitable," said Doctor John. "I'm thinking the little maid will manage to get for herself, full measure and running over, all the punishment that's coming to her. She's not the kind that punishment overlooks."
Was there a suspicion of criticism in all this? Could it be that John Pigeon and Jim Pigeon, her lifelong cavaliers, in whose sight all she did was wont to seem perfection, whose unswerving homage had been her stay through many an hour of faintness and misgiving, were now, at last, beginning to admit doubts? Two large tears gathered slowly in the corners of Mistress Mehitable's blue eyes, the resolution fled from her mouth, and her fine lips quivered girlishly. She twisted her shapely little hands in her apron, then regained her self-control with an effort.
"Dear friends," said she, "I fear I have made a sad failure of the duty which I so confidently undertook. I thought I could surely do so much for her,—could so thoroughly understand Winthrop's child. But that foreign woman—that strange blood! There is the trouble. That is what baffles all my efforts. Oh, perhaps it is partly my fault, too. Perhaps the child was right in the very singular letter she left for me, saying—just as if she were a grown woman and had the same rights as I had—that the trouble was that we could not understand each other! Oh, I fear I am not the right woman to have the care of Barbara!"
"You are the rightest woman in the world, Mehitable!" thundered Doctor Jim, in explosive protest against this self-accusation. "The rightest woman in the world to have the care of any man, woman, or child that ever lived."
"Jim Pigeon's right, Mehitable, as he usually is, outside of medicine and politics," declared Doctor John. "The little maid will be ready enough some day, I'll warrant, to acknowledge how lucky she was in having her Aunt Hitty to care for her. But here in Second Westings we are not just at the centre of things exactly, and it may be we get into ruts, thinking our ways are the only ways. Shall we try new ways with this very difficult little maid, Hitty?"
Mistress Mehitable brushed off the tears which had overflowed, and held out a hand to each of the big brothers.
"You are the best friends a woman ever had," she averred with conviction; "and if you both disagree with me, I must be wrong. It shall be your way to the best of my power. After you've had the horses put up, come back here and I'll have a hot bite ready for you. But—oh, I do wish Winthrop had married among his own people!"
"It is late, dear lady, and you are tired after your anxieties," said Doctor Jim. "But, nevertheless, since you are so gracious, we will soon return,—eh, what, John?—for a bowl of that hot sangaree which Mehitable's fair hands know how to brew so delicately."
"Don't misunderstand Jim, Mehitable," said Doctor John, as the two withdrew. "The comfort of your punch is nothing to us as the comfort of your presence. Had you ever consented to make one man happy, how miserable would you have made others, Mehitable!"
There was deep meaning and an old reproach under Doctor John's tender raillery; and Mistress Ladd's cheeks flushed as she stood a few moments motionless, alone in her low-ceiled, wide parlour. She was convicted of failure at every point. Well she knew how happy she might have made either one of the big-limbed, big-hearted brothers, had she not shrunk from making the other miserable. And she had never been able to decide which was the dearer to her heart; for, though she was apt to turn first to Jim in any need, or any joy, the thought of pain for John was ever hard for her to endure. Her heart was very full as she set about preparing the brew which they both loved: and before they came she stole noiselessly up-stairs to the room over the porch, and softly kissed the dark, unrepentant waves of the sleeping Barbara's hair.