Barbara Ladd Read online

  Produced by Al Haines

  Cover art]

  [Frontispiece: _Leaning over the edge of the porch she dropped thebundle soundlessly into a bed of marigolds_. (_Page_ 13)]

  BARBARA LADD

  BY

  CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS

  AUTHOR OF

  THE KINDRED OF THE WILD, THE HEART OF THE ANCIENT WOOD, A SISTER TO EVANGELINE, POEMS, ETC.

  ILLUSTRATED BY

  FRANK VERBECK

  NEW YORK

  GROSSET & DUNLAP

  PUBLISHERS

  Copyright, 1902,

  BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (Incorporated).

  All Rights Reserved.

  Published October, 1902

  Eighth Impression, April, 1908.

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  "LEANING OVER THE EDGE OF THE PORCH SHE DROPPED THE BUNDLE SOUNDLESSLY INTO A BED OF MARIGOLDS" (_See page 13_) . . . _Frontispiece_

  "'WHAT A NICE-LOOKING BOY YOU ARE!' SHE SAID"

  "'O MEHITABLE--DEMORALISED--BY BARBARA!' VOWED DOCTOR JOHN"

  "HE SANK OFF AGAIN, FALLING BACK INTO BARBARA'S SUPPORTING ARMS"

  BARBARA LADD

  CHAPTER I.

  She knew very well that she should have started earlier; but if therewas one thing that could daunt her wayward and daring little spirit, itwas the dark. Now, as she stood, wide-eyed and breathless withsuspense, beside her open window, the face of the dark began to change.A gray pallor came over it, and on a sudden she was aware of a blackhorizon line, ghostly, lonely beyond words, far to the eastward overthe yet invisible tree-tops. With this pallor came a chill whichBarbara felt on her little, trembling hands, on her eyes, and in herheart: as if the night, in going, had laid aside its benignity andtouched the world in farewell with a cold hand of warning and menace.Then, here and there a leaf stood out, palely distinct, upon the thickfrondage of the apple-tree whose nearest branches crowded the roof ofthe porch below her window. There was a faint chirping from the heartof the syringa thicket; and Barbara's ears were so attentive that shecaught the drowsy, awakening flutter of small wings down below in thedewy gloom. With the sound came a cool and delicate pungency from thewet currant bushes, puffed upward to her as if the garden world beneaththe leaves had drawn a long breath in getting ready to awake. Thistonic scent, which nostrils less keen than Barbara's would scarcelyhave discerned, came to the child as a signal for action. Peculiarlysensitive to the message and influence of odours, she felt this suddenfragrance in her nerves as a summons, a promise, and a challenge, allin one. Noiselessly she pushed the two diamond-paned leaves of herwindow open to their widest. How the grayness was spreading! A pangof apprehension seized her, lest she had delayed too long. She turnedimpulsively, and stepped into the darkness of her room.

  In a moment her slim little figure reappeared at the window, this timeheavily encumbered. In one hand was a round, soft bundle, in the othera square wicker basket with a white cloth tied over the top. The whitecloth glimmered conspicuously, but the light was not yet strong enoughto reveal the colour of the bundle. Setting both the burdens out uponthe roof of the porch, she turned, glanced in at the window, and said,softly:

  "Good-bye, little room! I haven't been happy with you. But I hope youwon't be lonely when I'm gone!"

  Leaning over the edge of the porch, she dropped the bundle soundlesslyinto a bed of marigolds. The basket, on the other hand, she took upwith care. Thrusting her left arm through the handle, she swungherself nimbly into the apple-tree, and thence to the ground; while thebasket tipped and slewed as if it were alive.

  "Be still, my babies!" she whispered; and then, picking up the bundlefrom the crushed marigolds, and never turning her head to look up atthe stately old house which she was leaving, she fled down the walkbetween the currant and gooseberry bushes, the thyme, the sage, andsummer savoury beds,--through a narrow wicket gate half-hidden inlarkspur and honeysuckle,--along the foot-path through the rank anddripping burdocks back of the barn, where she felt a little qualm ofhomesickness at the sound of her dear horses breathing deeply andcontentedly in the stalls,--and thence, letting down one of the barsand crawling through with her burdens, out into the graying, hillockyopen of the cow-pasture.

  By this time a cool and luminous wave of pink, changing to pale saffronat its northeastern edges, had crept up over the far-off hilltops.Faint tinges of colour, of a strange and unusual transparency, began toreveal themselves all over the expanse of pasture. As the miracle ofdawn thus overtook her, a sense of unreality came upon Barbara's soul.She felt as if this were not she, this little girl so adventurouslyrunning away--but rather some impossible child in a story-book, who hadso engaged her sympathies for the moment that she could not be surewhich was make-believe and which herself. With a chill of lonesomedread she slipped a hand under the cloth and into the basket. Thetouch of warm, live, cuddling fur reassured her, and brought her backto her own identity. But stranger and stranger grew the mysticaltransparency, only made the more startling by a fleece of vapour hereand there curling up from between the hillocks. Stumps, weed-tops,patches of juniper, tufts of blueberry bush, wisps of coarse grass leftuncropped, seemed to detach themselves, lift, and float in the solventclarity of that new-born air, that new-born light. Surely, this wasnot her old, familiar world! Barbara stood still, her great eyesdilating, her lips parted in a kind of ecstasy, as sense and spiritalike drank in the marvel of the dawn. It seemed to her as if shediscovered, in that moment, that the world was made anew with everymorning,--and with the discovery she became aware, dimly but securely,that she was herself a part of the imperishable, ever-renewing life.

  She was brought back to more instant considerations by the suddenappearance of a red-and-white cow, which got up with a great, windy,grunting breath, and came toward her out of a misty hollow. With allthe cows of the herd Barbara was in high favour, but just now the sightalarmed her.

  "Gracious!" she exclaimed to herself, "Abby will be out to milk inanother minute!"--and she broke into a run at the best speed that herburdens would permit, making for the maple woods which lay to the northof the pasture. The cow looked and mooed after her wistfully,wondering at her flight, and aching for the relief of the milker'shand. But Barbara paid no heed to her, nor to the others of the herd,who now came into view from corners of the pasture as the enchantedlight grew and spread. She darted on, vanishing in the hollows,flitting over the hillocks, fleetly threading the crooked and slenderpath,--a wisp-like, dark little figure. Her bundle, now seen to betied up in a silk shawl of flamelike scarlet, and the snow-whitecovering of her basket, flickered across the mystical transparency ofthe landscape like bubbles of intense light blown far in advance of themorning.

  Not till she came to the other side of the pasture and plunged into theobscurity of the woods did Barbara check her speed. Here the dawn wasbut beginning to penetrate, thrusting thin shafts of pink-amber lighthere and there through the leafage, and touching the eastward sides oftrunk and branch with elusive glories. Breathing quickly, Barbara setdown the bundle and the precious basket; but she snatched them up againas she caught a sound of panting and running behind her. On theinstant, however, the alarm faded from her face.

  "Down, Keep!" she commanded, sharply, as the gaunt gray form of amastiff leaped upon her, almost carrying her off her feet. Fawning,and giving little yelps of joy, the huge animal crouched before her,pounding the sward with ecstatic tail, and implored to lick her hands.She threw both arms about the dog's head, murmuring to him, poignantlyimpetuous, her voice tearful with self-reproach:

  "Was his best friend going away, without ever saying good-bye to him?Well, she was bad, she was very, very bad!" And she wiped away severallarge, surreptitious tears upon the furry folds of his neck. Then shesprang up and renew
ed her journey resolutely; while the mastiff,bounding in front of her, showed his plain conviction that some fine,audacious adventure was afoot, and that it would be his great luck tohave a part in it.

  For more than a mile Barbara followed the wood-path, the fresh, wetgloom lightening about her as she went. Where the maples thinned away,and the slenderer ash and birch took their place, she got glimpses of apale sky overhead, dappled with streamers of a fiery violet. Here andthere a dripping leaf had caught the colours from above and flashedelusive jewels upon her vision. Here and there the dewy thickets ofwitch-hazel and viburnum crowded so close about the path that herskirts and shoulders were drenched with their scented largess. Hereand there in her path rose suddenly a cluster of night-borntoadstools--squat, yellow, and fat-fleshed, or tall, shadowy-hooded,and whitely venomous--over which she stepped with wary aversion. Andonce, eager as was her haste, she stopped to pick a great, lucent,yellow orchid, which seemed to beam like a sacred lamp in its darkgreen shrine beneath the alders.

  At length the path dipped sharply between rocks overgrown with poisonivy. Then the trees thinned away before her, and the day grew at oncefull of light; and the mirror-surface of a little lake, shining withpalest crocus-tint and violet and silvery rose, obscured with patchesof dissolving mist, flashed upon her eyes. She ran down to the veryedge, where the water seemed to breathe among its fringing pebbles, andthere set down the bundle and the basket; while the dog, yelpingjoyously, bounded and splashed in the shallows.

  When, however, Barbara stepped up the bank to a thicket of Indianwillow, and proceeded, by dint of carefully calculated lifting andpulling, to drag forth from its hiding-place a ruddy canoe ofbirch-bark, the dog's spirits and his flaunting tail fell together. IfBarbara's venture was to be in the canoe, he knew he should have nopart in it; and his big, doggish heart was dejected. With his tonguehanging from his jaws, he sat up on his brindled haunches and lookedon, while slowly and laboriously Barbara worked the frail craft down tothe water. When it was afloat, and the resined prow pulled up into atuft of weeds to keep it from drifting away, Barbara fetched twopaddles from the same hiding-place. In the bow of the canoe she stowedher bundle and her basket. In the stern she arranged a pile of fernsas a cushion for her knees. Once more she flung her arms around Keep'smassive neck, kissed his silky ears, wept violently for the smallestfraction of a minute; and then, stepping into the canoe with the lightprecision of one skilled with the birch-bark, she pushed off, and withquick, vigorous strokes headed straight across the lake. The dog ranuneasily up and down the water's edge, whining and fretting after her.When she was a little way out he made a sudden resolution, plunged intothe water, and swam eagerly after the fugitive. But Barbara heard thesplash, and understood. She realised that he would surely upset thecanoe in trying to get into it, and this was the time when she mustseem hard, however her heart was melting. She looked back over hershoulder.

  "Go home, Keep! Go home!" she commanded.

  The dog turned obediently and made for shore. And Barbara, her lipsset and the big tears rolling down her cheeks, continued her journeyout across the lake.