CHAPTER XVII.
The road toward Westings Landing, which was the shortest way to Gault House, was joined about a mile out by another, equally rough and unfriendly to travel, coming from Westings Centre. Robert had passed this junction at full gallop, but a few rods beyond a stretch of mire compelled him to rein in and pick his way. As he did so he caught a sound of beating hoofs behind him, and turned in the saddle to see who came.
Careering recklessly down the road from Westings Centre, her black curls flying from beneath the rim of her little white beaver, came a slim figure in a black habit on a great black horse. She burst into a peal of laughter as Robert turned, and cried, gaily:
"I'm coming. Wait for me, Robert!"
Robert wheeled his horse as if on a pivot, fairly lifted him with voice and spur, and was with her in a few great strides.
"You!" was all his voice could say; but his face said so much more that the greeting did not seem curt to Barbara. Her small face was radiant with excitement, audacity, and delight. At the beginning of the miry ground she reined in, patted her beast's wet neck, and said, breathlessly:
"I thought you might like me to ride a little way with you, Robert, to make sure of your getting the right road. Wasn't it very nice of me,—when you don't one bit deserve any such attention?"
"You are an angel!" cried Robert, in an ecstasy.
Barbara laughed clear and high at this.
"Oh!" she shrilled, melodiously derisive, "that's what I think I am, of course. But no one has ever agreed with me after knowing me more than three days. This is your third day, Robert. It's well for me you're going while you labour under this flattering delusion."
"It's no delusion," averred Robert, stoutly, far past wit, and with no weapon left but bluntness. "You are the loveliest thing in the world."
This, in Barbara's own opinion, was nonsense. But she liked to hear him say it, nonsense or not. She pondered for a moment, her face turned away indifferently, that he might not see she was pleased.
"You contradict yourself," she retorted. "You know angels are not in the world!"
"One is!" said Robert.
"I like you so much better, Robert, when you're saying clever things like that," said Barbara, patronisingly, "than when you are just stupid, and don't do anything but just look at me, as you do sometimes!"
She was too young to know that when a man can be witty with a woman he is not, at the moment, so engrossed in her but that he is able to think of himself.
Before Robert could reply they were past the miry ground, and Barbara had once more set her black horse at the gallop. The sorrel needed no urging to follow,—and indeed, for a few minutes both riders were fully occupied in preventing the ride from degenerating into a headlong race, so emulous were the two horses. The road was still very bad, broken with ruts, holes, and boulders, and the pace was therefore full of peril. The black just escaped plunging his fore legs into a bog-hole, and the narrowness of the escape seemed to make him lose nerve. Robert saw with anxiety that Barbara, though her horsemanship equalled her canoeing, was just now in a far too reckless mood.
"Wait, please, my dear lady," he begged. "This is no road for fast riding. That good beast of yours just escaped a bad fall, and he's a bit nervous. Let's walk them till we get to better ground."
But Barbara had not noticed her escape, and she was thrilling with exhilaration. She did not know how beside herself she was.
"If you're afraid, follow at your own pace!" she cried, mockingly. "I came out to ride!" And with a wild word of encouragement to the black, and a throwing forward of the reins upon his neck, she shot on at full speed.
"I beg you don't be so reckless!" cried Robert. "You will get a bad fall riding this way on such a road!" There was intensest anxiety in his voice, but the faintest tinge of reproof went with it, as Barbara's sensitive pride was quick to discern.
"I shall ride as recklessly as I please," said she. "But don't let that trouble you. Be careful if you like. Ride like an old woman if you like!"
This taunt did not touch Robert, as he knew the quality of his own horsemanship,—which, indeed, Barbara's attentive eyes had been quick to note. But the mood it betrayed alarmed and half angered him. He saw in fancy that fleeing, daring, wayward little figure stretched lifeless on the roadside, the radiant face white and still. His own face paled and his jaw set obstinately as he urged forward his big sorrel in silence.
The new horse proved worthy of Narragansett fame. Over the worst ground his peculiar pace carried him with an ease which the big black's heavy tread could not match. And when the ground was firmer, and he could stretch out at full run, he soon closed up the gap between himself and his rival. This nettled Barbara, who thought her Black Prince a record-breaker; and she even went so far as to wave her riding-crop, as if she might be inclined to use it on this beast, which had never felt the whip. Nevertheless, the heavy hoof-beats behind crept closer; and soon the sorrel's nose was at her stirrup; and then Robert's stirrup and his knee were level with her own,—and with a quick sidelong glance she caught the grim resolve on his dark face. She was feeling by this time the least bit ashamed of herself, and awaking to the risks of the road, so she said, sweetly:
"That's a splendid horse of yours, Robert. And you can ride!"
"Thank you, Mistress Barbara!" said Robert, unmollified. And just then the road straightened out, a stretch of hard, dry level, inviting to the loose rein and the unchecked run.
"There's no danger here, Master Careful!" cried Barbara.
"No, not here,—except branches!" acknowledged Robert, drawing a deep breath of relief.
And now for more than a mile the road was good. It wound in slow curves, the high-branched ash and white maple meeting over it in stately arches. Under foot it was hard and fairly even, with a thin turf between the shallow ruts. Sunlight and shadow flecked it in vivid patches; and the summer winds, which were blowing briskly in the open, breathed down this sheltered corridor only as half-stirred exhalations of faint perfume. Neck by neck the horses galloped, their riders silent, looking straight ahead, but thrillingly conscious of each other's nearness. And the strong rhythm of the hoof-beats beneath them seemed to time itself to the rushing of their blood. It was now no longer with vexation, but with a sort of half pride, that Barbara realised the superiority of the sorrel over her own mount. She saw that only Robert's firm hand on the rein kept his beast from forging ahead. Thus they rushed along through the vast solitudes,—really alone together, although those solitudes were populous with the furtive kindreds of fur and feather. For the sound of their coming travelled far before them, and gave the shy folk time to withdraw from such unwelcome intrusion. Even the big black bear,—he whom Barbara had seen tearing the ant-log,—now withdrew as noiselessly and shyly as the wood-mouse, not delaying for even a glance at the two wild riders. Only the red squirrel, inquisitive, daring, and impudent, stuck to his vantage-post on a high-arched limb and jabbered shrill derision at them as they raced by.
At length, just as the intoxication of the ride and the companionship were beginning to bewilder his brain, a turn of the road showed Robert a stretch of very bad ground right ahead. The careless roadmakers had tried, in a half-hearted way, to fill up a long bog with brush and poles. Had the attempt been fully carried out, the result would have been a rough but thoroughly passable piece of "corduroy road." As it was, however, the brush and poles together had in spots sunk a foot below the surface, at one side or the other, and in other spots had been quite engulfed by the hungry black mire, making that stretch the curse of wheel-travellers, and perilous enough to any but the most cautious horsemen.
The sight cooled Robert's nerves. Instead of reining in, however, he let his beast push a half-length to the front, that he might the better control the situation if need should arise. Then he said, resolutely:
"If you have no care for your own life, dear lady, I beg you to think of that good beast of yours. He will break a leg in yon bog-holes, and then he will have to be shot!"
Barbara had been fully prepared, by now, to listen to reason and check the pace. She knew she had been unreasoning in her excitement. But the fact that Robert knew she had been unreasonable, and dared to show, by his tone as well as by his argument, that he knew it, stirred a hot resentment in her heart. In a flash she forgot that she had ever been unreasonable at all. Her first impulse was to spur on with added speed. Had it been her own neck, merely, that she would risk, she would not have hesitated. But Robert had hit on the one compelling plea. She could not face the risk of hurt to her horse, or to any kindly beast whatever. She reined in sharply, therefore, without a word; and at a walk the two horses began to pick their wary way over the corduroy.
"There's danger to the good beasts, even at this pace," remarked Robert, with more truthfulness than tact.
"Did you suppose," retorted Barbara, in a voice of withering scorn, "that I was going to ride my Black Prince at a gallop over such a piece of road as this?"
This was exactly what Robert had supposed, of course. But a sudden ray of insight entering his candid brain in time, he refrained from saying so. He was on the point of saying, however, by way of explanation, that the ground which Barbara had already insisted upon traversing at full speed was but little better than this; but here, too, a sharpening perception checked him. He kept silence, seemingly absorbed in guiding his horse between the miry pitfalls, until they found themselves once again on firm ground,—firm but rough. The horses, still apprehensive, showed no disposition to resume their vehement gait.
"It's an outrage," cried Robert, "that the township should permit such a piece of road as this. I shall have a voice in affairs here in three or four years, and then I'll see that the road-work is properly done. I'll have no traps in this township to break good horses' legs!"
This sentiment was so much to Barbara's taste that she found it an excuse for being mollified.
"That's right, Robert!" she answered, very graciously. "Now, be sure you remember that when the time comes!"
"I'll remember it," cried Robert, with cheerful confidence.
By this time, when the leisurely walking of the horses offered no affront to the forest quiet, the birds were resuming their busy calls and the bustle of their intimate affairs; and the less shy members of the furry fellowship went once more about their business in the busy precincts of the road. Barbara's sympathetic and unerring vision singled them out, differentiating them from their harmonious surroundings, when Robert's eye, as a rule, could not without help see anything but lichened stumps and stones, or bunches of brown weed, or odd-shaped excrescences on the trees. Yet Robert's eye was the eye of the hunter, skilled in the ruses of all quarry. Barbara's woodcraft went immeasurably beyond his,—and perceiving this, her last resentment faded out and she began to initiate him. She named and distinguished for him birds of which he had never even heard, and corrected him with gleeful pride when he innocently mistook the cry of a woodpecker for that of a jay. As for Robert, his delight in this initiation was second only to his delight in his wilful initiator, who was now all earnestness and to him a marvel of abstruse erudition. He learned very quickly, however, and so Barbara was pleased not less by his comparative ignorance than by his superlative aptitude, which was an incense of flattery to his instructress. Only on the subject of deer and grouse Barbara could teach him nothing.
"You know all about those," she cried, reproachfully, "because you have taken the trouble to learn about them, so you can kill them!"
"It does seem a pity to kill such lovely, interesting creatures," acknowledged the lad, thoughtfully. "But what can we do? Surely they were given to us for our use. Providence intended them for our food. It must be right for us to kill them!"
"Of course," assented Barbara, unequipped with any philosophy which might have enabled her to combat this argument. "Of course, it is right for us to eat them. But you, Robert, you take pleasure in killing them. I don't quite like you for that!"
Robert's face grew more and more thoughtful, for this was to him a hard saying, indeed, and he had no answer ready. He was a skilled shot and a keen huntsman.
"I could not understand a man not taking pleasure in the chase," said he, "but I suppose if he got to know the wild things intimately, and love them, as you do, he could no longer bear to kill them, sweet lady!"
"I'm going to teach you to love them all, Robert," said Barbara, easily confident in her powers.
"I am taught already," he began, with the little elaborate air which Barbara liked. Then he changed his mind quickly. "No, I don't mean that at all! I shall need a great many lessons; but I shall learn at last, if you teach me faithfully!"
Barbara laughed, a clear, ringing laugh, that astonished the lurking weasel and made the red squirrel highly indignant.
"You don't mean anything at all you say, Robert. You just like to say pretty things!"
Which was wantonly unjust, as Barbara knew, and as her very gracious glance acknowledged.
A few rods farther on, Barbara suddenly drew rein, wheeled her horse about, and held out her hand.
"Now I must go home, Robert. I think I can trust you to find the rest of the way alone! Don't forget what I've told you. And don't forget to come and see Uncle Bob, the very first of next week. And thank you so much for bringing back the canoe."
Robert had promptly taken the little brown hand, and kissed it with somewhat more fervour than form required, till Barbara, without any sign of displeasure, snatched it away. Then, instead of saying good-bye, he wheeled his big sorrel. "You must allow me the honour of riding back with you, Mistress Barbara," said he.
"No, indeed!" cried the girl. "I cannot think of letting you do any such thing. It will be late enough as it is when you get to Gault House!"
Robert's mind was quite made up, but he scanned her face anxiously to see if she really meant her inhibition. Her dancing eyes and laughing mouth convinced him that she did not mean it with any serious conviction, so his obstinate jaw relaxed.
"Allow you to ride back through these woods alone, my lady?" he protested, gaily. "Do you think the wood spirits would let slip such an opportunity to carry off their queen? You are theirs, by rights, I know. But I must see you back safely into the hands of Mistress Mehitable."
So it came about that, in spite of his exigencies, Robert dined at Mistress Mehitable's, and did not start for Gault House till long past noon.