Charles Roberts - Barbara Ladd

It was to Uncle Bob, also, that Barbara owed the somewhat disreputable friendship of old Debby. The very first day that he and Barbara went canoeing on the lake, they explored the outlet, discovered old Debby's cabin, paid an uninvited call, and captivated the old dame's crusty heart. Glenowen knew human nature. He had the knack of going straight to the quintessential core of it, and pinning his faith to that in spite of all unpromising externals. He decided at once that Debby would be a good diversion for Barbara after he was gone; and when, later in the day, he learned that the old woman was universally but vaguely reprobated by the prim folk of Second Westings, he was more than ever assured that she would be a comfort to Barbara through many a dark hour of strangerhood and virtuous misunderstanding.

But Uncle Bob's visit had to end. He went away with misgivings, leaving Barbara to pit her careless candour, her thoughtless self-absorption, her scorn of all opinions that differed from her own, her caprices, her passionate enthusiasms, her fierce intolerance of criticism or control, against the granitic conventions of an old New England village. The half guilty, half amused support of Doctor John and Doctor Jim gave importance to her revolt, and so lightened the rod of Aunt Kitty's discipline as to save Barbara from the more ignominious of the penalties which her impetuous wilfulness would otherwise have incurred. The complete, though forbidden, sympathy of old Debby, affording the one safe outlet to her tumultuous resentments and passionate despairs, saved the child from brain-sickness; and once, indeed, on a particularly black day of humiliation, from suicide. Barbara had shaken the very foundations of law, order, and religion, by riding at a wild gallop, one Sunday afternoon, down the wide main street of Second Westings just as the good folk were coming out of meeting. Her rebellious waves of dark hair streamed out behind her little head. Her white teeth flashed wickedly between her parted scarlet lips, her big eyes flamed with the intoxication of liberty and protest – to these good folk it seemed an unholy light. Barbara ought to have been at meeting, but had been left at home, reluctantly, by Aunt Hitty, because she had seemed too sick to get out of bed. In very truth she had been sick beyond all feigning. Then one of those violent reactions of recovery which sometimes cause the nervous temperament to be miserably misunderstood had seized her at an inauspicious moment. As the tide of young vitality surged back to brain and vein and nerve, she had felt that she must let herself loose in wild action, or die. All unrealising the enormity of the offence, she had flung down her mad defiance to the sanctified and iron-bound repose of the New England Sabbath.

Such a sacrilege could not be overlooked or condoned. The congregation was appalled. Long upper lips were drawn down ominously, as austere eyes followed the vision of the fleeing child on the great black horse. Could it be that she was possessed of a devil? Pitying eyes were turned upon Aunt Hitty; and triumphant eyes of gratified grudge, moreover, for Aunt Hitty was proud, and had virtuous ill-wishers in the village. But Mistress Mehitable Ladd was equal to the occasion. With a level stare of her blue eyes, a cold tranquillity upon her small, fine mouth, she froze comment and forestalled suggestion. The feeling went abroad, in a subtle way, that the case would be dealt with and the piety of Second Westings vindicated in the eyes of Heaven. Doctor John and Doctor Jim looked grave, and said not a word. This was a time when Mistress Mehitable, they well knew, would brook no interference.

Of course there could be no question of such correction as would have fallen to the lot of any ordinary offender. There could be no such thing as putting a Ladd in the stocks. The regular machinery of village law rested quiescent. Equally of course, Mistress Mehitable would do nothing in anger. She was humiliated before the whole village, in a manner that could never be forgotten or wiped out. But her first feeling and her last feeling were alike of sorrow only. She would do her duty because Winthrop's child must be saved. But she had no proud consciousness of virtue in doing it. First, she attempted to explain to Barbara the depth, quality, and significance of her sin, its possible influence upon the ethics of Second Westings if allowed to go unpunished, the special variety of inherited evil which it revealed in her nature, and her stupendous need of having this evil eradicated by devotedly merciless correction. After the first few words of this exhortation, Barbara heard no more. She was at all times fiercely impatient of criticism, and now, being determined not to fly into a fury and further complicate her predicament, she shut her eyes, inwardly closed her ears, and concentrated her imagination on memories of the longed-for plantation by the Pawtuxet. This concentration gave her vivid little face an air of quietude, subjection, and voiceless sorrow, which Aunt Hitty was glad to construe as repentance. But it earned no mitigation of punishment. For one whole week Barbara was a prisoner in her room, eating her heart out in hatred of the stupidity and injustice of life. Then came around, at last, another Sabbath. Barbara was taken to church. There her proud soul was affronted by a public rebuke from the pastor, who exhorted her from the pulpit, contented the congregation by a rehearsal of her punishment, and held her up as an example to the other children of the village. Barbara listened with shut eyes and white lips, her heart bursting with rage. She ached to kill him, to kill her aunt, to annihilate Second Westings – saving only the animals, old Debby, Mercy Chapman, Doctor John and Doctor Jim. But when the good divine went on to say that her discipline would be concluded with a wholesome chastisement on the morrow, in the privacy of the house to which her sinful conduct had brought grief, – then, indeed, her heart stood still. She felt a great calmness come over her. She made up her mind to escape by her window that very evening and drown herself in the lake. If life contained such horrors she would have done with it.

She did not go that night, however, because she feared the dark. It was gray dawn when she climbed from her window. Blind, resolved, swift-footed, she fled through the woods. Old Debby, resting in her punt by the lake's edge, not far from the Ladd landing-place, was pulling some sweet-rooted water-plants of a virtue known only to herself, when she was startled by a heavy splash and a little gasping cry which came from the other side of a steep point some four or five rods distant. Her vigorous old arms drove the punt through the water in mad haste – for there was something in the cry that wrenched at her heart. Rounding the point, she stood close in to the foot of a rock which jutted out into five or six feet of water. Peering down over the side of the punt, she saw lying on the bottom a slim, small body. A groan burst from her lips, for Barbara's face was half visible; and the old woman understood at once. She had heard the village gossip, and she had feared a tragedy. She knew that Barbara could swim, – but there was her long scarf of red silk twisted about the little arms lest resolution should falter in the face of the last great demand.

For a second old Debby was at fault. She could not swim. Then her brain worked. Reaching down with one of the oars, she twisted the blade tightly into the skirt of the child's gown, pulled her up, and snatched her into the boat. Experienced and ready in emergency, the old woman thrust ashore, laid the moveless little figure down upon a mossy hillock, and in a very few minutes succeeded in bringing it back to conscious life. She asked no questions, while Barbara clung to her, sobbing spasmodically at long intervals. She murmured pet names to her, caressed and soothed her, told her she was safe and no one should abuse her, and finally, lifting her into the punt and laying her gently on an armful of sweet bracken in the stern, rowed over the lake to her cabin. Throughout the journey Barbara lay with closed eyes, while the young life, slowly but obstinately reasserting itself, brought back the colour to cheeks and lips. Only once did she speak. Lifting her lids, she gazed fixedly at the hard-lined old face that bent over the swaying oars.