Instantly Barrie forgot the shoes. Her heart jumped as it had jumped when she first saw the key in the door of the garret stairs. Would they have turned to the wall in this dark corner any picture save one? The girl knew that in another moment she would be looking at the portrait of her mother.
To get at it, she had to shut the trunk and climb on the rounded lid, for the big wooden Noah's Ark was too heavy to lift, and too firmly wedged in among large pieces of furniture to be pushed out of the way. Kneeling on the trunk, regardless of her finery, Barrie grasped the picture frame with both hands and pulled it up from its narrow hiding-place. Then, scrambling down, she backed out into a space clear enough to permit of turning the picture, round. Then she could not help giving a little cry, for it seemed that she was beholding a miracle. Her own face, her own figure, the very dress she wore, and the odd way she had looped up her red braids, were repeated on the dusty canvas.
It seemed too wonderful to be true, yet it was true that she had chosen to put on the gown in which its owner had long ago stood for her portrait. And the knotted curls just above the picture-forehead were like little ruddy leaping flames.
Just at first glance Barrie thought that she was exactly like the picture; but when she had wiped the dust off the canvas, and saw the painting clearly, she began to realize and count the differences. The portrait was that of a young woman, not a girl still almost a child. Knowledge and love of the world glittered in the great dark eyes which turned up ever so slightly at their outer corners in a curiously bewitching way. Barrie's eyes were dark too, but they were hazel, and could look gray or even greenish yellow in a bright light; but the eyes in the picture were almost black, and full of a triumphing consciousness of their own fascination. The artist had hinted at dimples, and these Barrie's cheeks repeated; but the girl's face was in shape a delicate oval, though the chin was as firm as if a loving thumb and finger had pinched it into prominence. The face on the canvas was fuller, shorter, squarer, and its chin was cleft in the middle. The mouth was smaller and more pouting—a self-conscious, petulant mouth; but Barrie thought it beautiful, with its flowerlike, half-smiling red lips.
"Mother—mother!" she said, "darling, lovely mother! Oh, if you could only talk to me! If you could only tell me all about yourself!"
As she spoke aloud something moved in the garret: a board creaked, a struck chair or table scraped along the uneven floor, and Mrs. Muir appeared round a corner of the piled furniture. Barrie stiffened herself, standing up straight and tall and defiant, ready for battle, holding the portrait as if it were a shield. But she was not prepared to see Mrs. Muir start back, stumbling against something which fell with a sharp crash, nor to hear her give vent to a squeal of terror. It was anger the girl had expected to rouse, not fear, and she faced the old housekeeper from her distance in blank astonishment.
They stood staring at each other across the shadows lit by floating motes of gold; and Mrs. Muir's large, pallid face looked, Barrie thought, as if it had been turned to gray stone, the gray stone of the carved monuments in the family burial-ground. For a moment neither spoke, but at last some words seemed to drop from the old woman's mouth, rather than be deliberately uttered:
"May God have mercy on me!"
"What is the matter?" Barrie exclaimed, the strange spell broken; but instead of answering, Mrs. Muir gasped, and then broke out crying, a queer gurgly sort of crying which frightened the girl. She did not dislike the housekeeper, and she was so genuinely distressed as well as surprised at this strange exhibition, that she would have set down the portrait to run to Mrs. Muir's succour if at that moment the stillness of the garret had not been wakened by the tap, tap of a stick. Somebody was coming up the stairs, hobbling, limping, yet hurrying with extraordinary energy.
There was only one person in the house, or maybe in the world, whose coming made that noise, that mingled hobble, rush, and tap: Grandma.