CHAPTER XXVI.
Barbara slept little, but lay late, and Glenowen was away about business ere she appeared. By the time her caller arrived she was fairly herself, only subdued in spirit, sorrowful, and homesick. She had taken pains, however, that her morning toilet should be becoming; and Jerry Waite thought her pallor, the shadows about her great grave eyes, the wistfulness of her scarlet mouth, even more enchanting than her radiance and sparkle of the night before.
"This is most gracious of you, fair lady, to let me come so soon!" he murmured ecstatically, over the rosy brown tips of her slim fingers. "Did the other men but know of it, I should have feared for my life to come without a guard!"
Barbara smiled faintly, willing to appreciate his flatteries, but in no mood for badinage and quip.
"Nay, sir!" she answered, "do not lay it to my graciousness, which is scant to even so charming a gentleman as Mr. Waite, but to my curiosity, which I acknowledge to be great and insistent. Tell me this wonderful thing you promised to tell me!"
Jerry Waite assumed an air of mock supplication.
"I implore you, dear lady, suffer me for one moment to delude myself with the ravishing dream that 'twas for my company, no less than for my story, that you permitted me to come.— What, no, not for one moment the sweet delusion?"
Barbara shook her head resolutely.
"No, first deserve favour, before you presume to claim it, sir!" she retorted. "Earn my grace by a story as interesting as you have led me to expect. Then, perhaps, I may like you well enough to let you stay awhile, for the sake of your company!"
"So be it, if so the queen decrees!" said Waite. "My little story is about a duel, of which, as I gathered last night, the fairest but—pardon me—not always the most gracious of her sex knows a little, but not the most interesting details!"
"I have heard too much already of this duel!" interrupted Barbara. "I do not understand how it concerns me!"
"Oh, lady, this impatience of yours!" said Waite, watching her keenly. "How can you expect to understand the manner in which it concerns you, if you will not let any one tell you the story? I stand pledged to make the story interesting on pain of forfeiting your good will!"
"Well," agreed Barbara, with seeming reluctance. In very truth she was trembling with eagerness for him to go on. "But, I pray you, be as brief as is consistent with justice to your claim as a narrator!"
"I will be most brief!" said Waite. "For the merit lies in the story itself, not in the fashion of the telling. Yesterday, a little after the noon hour, some half-score gentlemen were gathered by chance in Pym's Ordinary, where many of us frequent for the latest bit of gossip. There was talk of this, that, and the other, but most of the charms of a lady whom we know and reverence—"
"Who was she?" asked Barbara.
But Waite, intent upon his story, paid no heed.
"The praises, the compliments, the eulogiums," he went on, "that were heaped upon this magical name seemed to show that every man was at her feet. All but Carberry. Captain Carberry is a chill-souled, carping, sarcastical fellow, and arrogant withal, by reason of the unmatched agility of his blade. It had pleased him to be displeased by certain sweet, if a trifle pungent, sprightlinesses of the lady in question; and now his comments ran sharply counter to those of the rest of the company. He did not admire her at all,—which was, of course, within his undoubted rights, however it discredited his taste. But presently his criticisms became a trifle harsher than was fitting; and there was a moment of uneasy silence. Then, clear upon the silence, Gault spoke,—Gault, who had hitherto been listening without a word.
"'Carberry,' said he, quietly, 'you have said just enough. One word more will be too much!'
"Every one held his breath. There was an ugly look about Gault's mouth, and we trembled for him. He is liked, you know; while Carberry, a man ten years older, is feared. Carberry looked Bob over, with a supercilious smile, which meant mischief, as we knew, and then drawled slowly:
"'I shall say whatever it may please me to say about that damned little—' But no one was to hear the sentence finished. We can never have our curiosity certainly satisfied as to that word, which just then got smashed beyond recognition behind Carberry's teeth. It was probably not so very bad a word, if the truth were known. Bob was taking no risks on that score. His blow was straight as a bullet; and Carberry went sprawling over two chairs and a table.
"When he picked himself up he was quite cool,—collected and businesslike. That we knew to be his deadly way, and we trembled for Bob. Bob, however, seemed as easy in his mind as Carberry. The two of them, indeed, were so deuced civil you might have thought they were arranging to marry each other's sisters. There was no time lost, you may be sure. Seconds were chosen, terms agreed upon, a doctor sent for, and we promptly made up a little pleasure party to the woods.
"As for the fight, dear lady, I spare your gentle soul the details. It lacked just one element of interest to the connoisseur,—both combatants fought in one fashion. There was no contrast, such as one might have expected between a boy of twenty-three and a veteran of thirty-six. At the very first Carberry had attacked with fury,—but when he felt the quality of Bob's wrist he saw it was not a case for bluster, and settled down to business. Both fought smiling, alike cool, wary, dangerous, sure of the result. Where and when Bob learned it, we none of us knew. He is a queer, reticent chap in some ways. But learned it he had,—and I, who like to study faces, saw the tinge of surprise in Carberry's face pass to admiration. His rage was forgotten in the exhilaration of his favourite game. I never again expect to see two blades so nicely matched. The excitement to us watchers grew intense, till our knees felt weak. But they two seemed as fresh as when they started.
"At last—'a touch!" said Carberry,—and then, by the slight hissing of the words between his teeth I realised the strain.
"'Not at all!' answered Robert,—and his words, too, came hissingly, for all the easy smile upon his lips. Then both grew white. And for a few minutes there was no change. And it seemed to us that our eyes could follow the blades no longer. And then—for the life of me I could not see how it happened—a red stain came on the shoulder of Bob's shirt; and in the next second Carberry, letting his sword fall, dropped in a heap.
"Before we could recover our astonishment, Robert and the doctor together were bending over the wounded man, and had his shirt ripped open. 'I've got it, eh?' said Carberry, faintly. 'A fair, clean thrust, an' served me damn well right!' And he held out his hand to Bob,—who grasped it with both his, and looked now, all of a sudden, like a boy ready to cry.
"'Stuff and nonsense, Captain!' exclaimed the doctor. 'You've not got your quietus with this bare bodkin. You'll be all right, sound as ever, in a month, a fortnight maybe!'
"'Thank God!' cried Robert.
"'My sentiments exactly!' said Carberry, his voice stronger with the knowledge that he was not dying. 'Gault, my compliments, with my best apologies! Great sword, my boy, great—' and with that he swooned from the pain and loss of blood. And we, very happy that all had ended so happily, got him to the coach, and so home. And the rest, dear Mistress Ladd, you know!"
"A mighty interesting story, I admit!" said Barbara. "But still I ask, of what especial, immediate interest to me?"
Waite looked at her curiously. Was it possible she could be so blind? But her wide eyes were innocent of all comprehension. It suddenly occurred to him that, new come to town as she was, she found it impossible to imagine her name the theme of tongues. He began to understand.
"You know the lady," said he, and paused.
"Well, sir, 'tis possible. I have met many in the few days that I have been in New York. What is her name—since you seem to hold it an important matter."
"Her name, dear lady—her name is one that stirs a thrill of admiring homage in all our hearts. It is—Mistress Barbara Ladd!"
Barbara caught her breath, and her eyes dilated.
"What?" she cried, though she had heard quite clearly.
"Her name is Mistress Barbara Ladd!" repeated Jerry Waite.
"Oh, Mr. Waite. No! No! Don't tell me it was on my account that Robert fought. Impossible! He might have been killed! And I thought—" but she stopped herself in time, without saying what it was she had thought.
Jerry Waite became serious.
"It seems to me, dear lady, that your thought, whatever it was, did Gault an injustice," said he, gently. "And that is my explanation. Am I forgiven?"
Barbara conquered her distress. This was the easier—after the first pang of remorse—because the fact that Robert had not failed her soon overtopped in her mind the fact that she had failed Robert. That unknown woman—the hateful vision vanished in a burst of light. The ache of loss was healed in her heart. She was reinstated, too, in her self-esteem. New York grew bright again. Her conquests were once more worth while. Robert should behold them all,—and be one of them,—the most subjugated of them all. At last her face grew radiant,—her eyes dancing, her teeth flashing, her mouth the reddest rose, her clear brown cheeks softly aflush.
"Yes, indeed, Mr. Waite," she cried, holding out her hand. "It is a beautiful story, and wins you a very high place in my regard. You may stay and talk to me till dinner-time, if you like; and then my uncle will be glad to have you dine with us!"
The first part of the invitation Waite accepted with alacrity, and cursed himself bitterly that he had an engagement to prevent him staying for dinner. In the conversation that followed Barbara gained him and chained him fast, not as a mad, intoxicated lover, but as one of the best and most loyal of her friends. But the moment he was gone she rushed to her scrutoir and in fierce haste scribbled a note. It ran:
"DEAR ROBERT:—I did not understand at all. I thought something quite different from the truth. I have just found out about things. Please come and talk to me till dinner-time, if you like; and then let me tell you how perfectly horrid I think myself.
"BARBARA."
This she sealed with a care that contrasted curiously with the haste with which she had written it. Then she called her maid and sent it around to the stately-doorwayed office on Bowling Green.
The answer that came was merely a bunch of dark red roses, with never a written word; but Barbara found it quite satisfactory. To Robert it would have seemed superfluous to have said he would come. Barbara made her toilet with especial care, selecting everything with a view to making herself look as nearly as possible like the Barbara of the old Second Westings days. As she surveyed herself in the glass, she was astonished at the result. Had she really put the hands of time back five years? As she remembered, she had looked just so on the afternoon when Robert came, and found her in the apple-tree reading "Clarissa." It was three o'clock already,—and Robert had been waiting already half an hour in the drawing-room below,—but she took yet a few minutes more for a finishing touch. She basted up a deep tuck in her petticoat,—about half an inch off for each year blotted from her calendar,—and then, with flaming eyes and mouth wreathed in laughter, she ran down to receive her guest. It was the direct obverse of the meeting she had planned.
"Did you ride over, Robert? Or did you come in the canoe?" she asked, as if she had but that moment jumped down out of the apple-tree.
"Barbara!" he cried, and seized and kissed both hands.
"I was beginning to fear that you had forgotten the way to Second Westings!" she went on, in gay reproach. "Why, it is weeks since you were over; and the young catbirds in the currant bush have grown their wings and flown; and the goldenrod's in flower; and the 'Early Harvests' are beginning to turn red on the old apple-tree over by the gate; and how will you explain your long absence, sir, to Aunt Hitty, and Doctor John, and Doctor Jim, I'd like to know!"
Robert was devouring her with his eyes as she spoke. "Oh, you do indeed look just as you did that day I found you in the apple-tree!" he cried, at last. "So weary long ago,—yet now, sweet lady, it seems but now!"
"Let us play it is but now," laughed Barbara.
"Yes," said Robert,—"but please don't send me right away to Doctor Jim, as you did that morning! I will try not to incur your displeasure. And don't be in such a hurry to get back to 'Clarissa' as you were then!"
So all the afternoon they talked the language and the themes of Second Westings, with the difference that Barbara was all graciousness, instead of her old mixture of acid and sweet. And when Glenowen came in to supper he was admitted to the game, and played it with a relish. And when, after supper, the three went riding, they took what they swore to be the Westings Landing Road,—though certain of the landmarks, as they could not but agree, looked unfamiliar. Almost they persuaded themselves that on their return they might entreat Mistress Mehitable to brew them a sack posset.
It was not till three days later, when Robert was begging more than his share of dances for a ball to be given that night at Government House, that Barbara explained—lightly and laughingly, but in a way that suffered Robert to understand—her quite inadequate reasons for having treated him so cavalierly on the evening after his duel.