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Standish of Standish, a novel by Jane Goodwin Austin |
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Chapter 38. Barbara |
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_ CHAPTER XXXVIII. BARBARA "Wilt give me some breakfast, Priscilla?" asked a well-known voice, as Mistress Alden bent to uncover her bake kettle, or Dutch oven, to see if the manchets of fine flour her husband liked so heartily were well browned. "Lord-a-mercy!" cried she nearly dropping the cover and springing to her feet. "What, 't is truly thee, Captain, and not thy spook? Why 't was but yester e'en Dame Bradford told me thou wert away with Master Bridges on a fishing adventure, and none might guess the day of thy return." "She said so, did she?" replied the captain; "and who heard it beside thee, Priscilla?" "Why--now let me think--yea and verily, Christian Penn was in the room and no doubt heard the sad tidings though she said naught." "And none beside, Mistress Alden?" "None--nay, now I think on 't, thy kinswoman Barbara was in presence. But there, my manchets will be burnt to crusts. Sit thee down, Captain, sit thee down." "And what said Mistress Standish anent my going?" asked Myles seating himself upon a three-legged stool and doffing his slouched hat. Priscilla looked at him with one of the keen glances which John declared counted the cockles of a man's heart. Then she smiled with an air of satisfaction and replied,-- "Barbara said naught, and so told me much." "Told thee much? Come now, Priscilla, spare me thine old-time jibes and puzzlements and show thyself true womanly, and mine own honest friend. I'm sore bestead, Priscilla--I have a quarrel with Myles Standish, and 't is as big a fardel as my shoulders will bear. Tell me what Barbara's silence meant to thee?" "It meant that it was her doings that thou hadst gone, and that thy going both angered and grieved her, Captain." "Angered, mayhap." "Yea, and grieved. She ate no supper, although I prayed her to taste a new confection of mine own invention." "Priscilla, dost think Master Allerton would be--would make a"-- "Would be the right goodman for Barbara? No, and no again, I think naught of the kind." "Ah! You women are so quick upon the trigger, Priscilla. I would my snaphance went to the aim as lightly and as surely as your or Barbara's thought." "Come now, Captain, the manchets are done, and the fish is broiled, and the porridge made. Wait but till I call the goodman and open a pottle of my summer beer; 't is dear Dame Brewster's diet-drink, with a thought more flavor to it, and John says--ah, here thou art, thou big sluggard. We need no horn to call thee to thy meat." Entering the cottage with a grin upon his lips and the promise of a kiss in his eyes, Alden started joyfully at sight of the Captain, and at Priscilla's impatient summons he bashfully took the head of the table and asked the blessing upon his family and their daily bread, which was then the undisputed duty of every head of a household. The captain ate well, as Priscilla slyly noted; and as she rose from the table and began rapidly to carry the few pewter and wooden dishes to the scullery John had added to the two rooms and loft comprising the cottage, she muttered,-- "What fools we women be! When they care for us the most, a savory dish will comfort them, and we must pule, and pine, and pale--ah!" For the captain had followed and stood at the housewife's elbow with a confused and somewhat foolish smile upon his face. "Wilt do me a favour, Priscilla?" "Gladly, as thou knowest, sir." "Nay, sir me no sirs, Priscilla! Take me for thine own familiar friend as already I am Alden's." "'T is an ill-advised quotation, Captain, for the 'own familiar friend' of the Psalmist proved a false one. But ne'ertheless I'll wear the cap, and haply prove as true as another to my promise. What can I do for thee, Captain?" "Why--as thou dost seem to surmise, Priscilla, there is a question between Barbara and me--truth to tell I gave her just matter of offense, and now I've thought better on 't and fain would tell her so, and yet I fear me if I ask outright she'll not let me come to speech of her." "Ay, ay, good friend, I see," exclaimed Priscilla, holding up her slender shapely hand. "And here's the cat's-paw that's to pull thy chestnuts from the fire!" "Nay Priscilla"-- "Yea Captain! Put not thy wit to further distress, good friend, for it needs not; I see all and more than all thou couldst tell me. Go thy way to the Fort, and look over thy dear guns and wait until thou seest--what thou wilt see." And with a little push the young matron thrust her guest out of the open door of the scullery, and hasted to finish her own labors. Almost an hour passed and the Captain of the Armies of New England had uncovered and examined and sighted and petted each gun in his armament more than once; had considered the range of the saker, the minion, the falcon, and the bases; and had stood gazing blankly at the whitened skull of Wituwamat above the gate of the Fort until the wrens who nested there began to fly restlessly in and out, fancying that the captain planned an invasion of their territory. He still stood in this posture when the rustle of a footfall among the dried herbage reached his quick ear, and turning he confronted Barbara, whose down-dropt eyes hid the gleam of amusement the sight of his melancholy attitude had kindled in their depths. "Priscilla says that you have returned home from the fishing because you were but poorly, cousin, and she would have me come and ask if you cared to speak with the chirurgeon who is going afield presently." "So chill, so frozen, Barbara? Is 't so a kinswoman should speak with one ill at ease both in mind and body?" "I came but as a messenger, sir, and venture not to presume upon any claim of kindred to one who joins the blood of Percivale to that of Standish." "Nay now, nay now, Barbara!--Here, come to the shaded side of the Fort, and sit you down where we two sat"-- "We two sat on the bench without your door the last parley that we had, good cousin." "'Gentle tongues aye give the sharpest wounds,' and it is thou who provest the proverb true, Barbara." "Nay, I'll sit me down and listen with all meekness to what thou hast to say, Captain Standish." "Thanks for even so much courtesy, Barbara, for I have sought thee to say that I deserve none at thy hands. I, to whose protection and comforting thou hast come across the sea, have treated thee as no base-born churl hath warrant for treating the meanest of woman-kind. I, to pride myself upon gentle blood and knightly training, and then throw insult and taunt upon a woman's unshielded head! Nay, Barbara, had any man three days agone forecast my doing such a thing, I had hurled the lie in his teeth, and haply crammed it down with Gideon's hilt. Nay--the good sword may well be ashamed of his master; well may I look for him to shiver in my grasp when next I draw him"-- "Myles! Myles, I'll hear no more! Nay then, not a word, or I shall hold it proven that my wish is naught to thee, for all thy contrite sayings. I fear me Priscilla is right, and thou 'rt truly ill. This hot sun hath touched thy head with some such distemper as sped poor Master Carver. Sit thee down here beside me, and I'll fetch cool water from the spring to bathe thy temples." "It needs not, cousin. My distemper is of the mind, the heart; nay, it is wounded honor, lass, and there's no ill of body can sting a man so shrewdly as that. Say that I have thy pardon, Barbara, if thou canst say it in truth, and 't will be better than any med'cine in Fuller's chest." "Why, certes, Myles, thou hast my forgiveness and over and over for any rough word thou mayst have said, and in sober sadness I mind not what they were, for all my thought hath been of my unkindness to thee. Myles, I never told thee, but when thy mother lay a-dying, and thou far away, fighting the Spaniards in Holland, she bade me care for thee even as she would have done, and fill a sister's place--and more, and I laid my hand in hers and promised sacredly, and so she rested content." "And why didst never tell me this before, cousin?" "I know not--nay, but that's not all out true, and I'll tell thee no lies, Myles. When next thou camest to our poor home at Man, thou didst see Rose, and from the first I knew well enow that there'd be no need of sister-care for one who found so sweet a wife." "Ay, she was sweet,--sweet as her pretty name. Dost know, Barbara, when these bushes burgeon in early summer with their soft and fragrant bloom it ever minds me of that sweet and fragile Rose that lies beneath." But Barbara was silent. "Ah well, ah well, 't is a brief chapter strangely at odds with the rude life wherein it found itself, and now 't is closed, and better so for her. She could not have bloomed among these dreary sands and savage woods; it was not fitting." He paced a few steps back and forward, and Barbara rose, her clear eyes full of a woman's noble and patient strength. "And so, Myles, we are at peace again, and I at least will make it my endeavor that there shall be no such breach of charity in the future.'" "Nay, Barbara, stay a little, I pray thee. I have somewhat to say, for which in advance I must ask thy patience and indulgence. Thou 'lt not be angered at me so soon again, Barbara?" "Nay, I'll not be angered, cousin." But Barbara's voice was very sad. "'T is this, and I thought of it all last night as we flitted in the moonlight across the bay, and what thou sayest of my mother's charge to thee fits my thought like hand and glove. Why should not we two wed, Barbara?" He turned and looked at her, and stood amazed to see how the steadfast calm of her face broke up in a tempest of indignation, of grief, of outraged womanhood. "Why, Barbara! Why, cousin! What is it, what have I said? What ails thee, dear? What works upon thee so cruelly?" "That any man should dare fancy it of me--there, there, let be, let me pass, let me go!" "Nay, then, I'll not let thee go. I'm but a rude bungler in these women-ways, and I've said or done somewhat that wounds thee sorely, and I'll not let thee go till 't is all outsaid and I have once more cleared myself of at least willful offense toward thee." "Wilt keep me by force, sir?" "Ay maid I will, for 't is only in bodily strength that I'm thy match, and so for the moment I will e'en use it. Sit thee here now and listen yet again, as I say, Why may not we two wed, cousin Barbara? Thou 'rt not mine own cousin, thou knowest, child; 't was thy father and mine were in that bond; and--now bear with me, Barbara--I've a shrewd suspicion that my mother bade thee be not a sister but a wife to me. Truth now, did she not, maid?" "She could not guide either my love or thine, so why would she try?" "Nay, that's no answer, lass, but we'll let the question go. There's not a woman alive, Barbara, so dear to me as thou; there's none I hold in greater reverence or trust; there's none with whom I would so gladly live out my days, and--though now I risk thy scorn,--there's none whose lineage I so respect"-- "What, the Henley lineage?" murmured Barbara, with face averted to hide a smile. "Nay, thou 'rt all Standish, Barbara! Thou 'rt more Standish than I, for thou hast the eyes of those old portraits my poor father vainly tried to wrest from his cousin Alexander. Let me look at those eyes, Barbara!" "And so because it suits thy convenience to make me thy wife, thou takst no heed of mine own fancies," said Barbara, not heeding this request. "And I pray thee unhand me, for I promise to patiently abide till thou hast said thy say." "Now there again thou dost me wrong, lass, for as I told thee t' other day there's no bachelor here fit to wed with thee, there's none I'd give thee to, nor would I see thee wither away unwed." "Gramercy cousin, but methinks that is a question I well might settle for myself." "Why nay, sith there is no gentleman unwed among our company, save Allerton, whom I love as little as thou dost." "I care not for any"-- "I know it, Barbara, I know it well. Thou 'rt that rare marvel, a woman sufficing unto herself, for as I believe, thou hast never fancied any man, though more than one hath fancied thee." "'T is my cold heart," murmured Barbara with a little smile strangled in its birth. "Nay," replied her cousin thoughtfully as he pulled at his moustache and gazed upon the ground at his feet. "Nay, I call thee not so much heartless as fancy-free. Thou 'rt kind and gentle, ay, and loving as my dear mother knew. I'm well content with thy heart for such as it is, Barbara, if thou 'lt but give it me." "Nay, Myles, I'm deadly sure I've none to give, and out of nothing nothing comes." "Thou ne'er canst love me, Barbara?" "No more than I love thee now, Myles." "With calm cousin-love thou meanest?" "I am ill skilled at logic, Myles. I cannot set out my feelings in class and order, as our chirurgeon doth his herbs and flowers." "Well, Barbara, I'm grieved that thou lookest upon me so coldly, but I draw not back from my petition. I'd liefer have thy calm tenderness than another's hot love, for I can trust thee as I trust mine own honor, and I know full well that thou 'lt ever be better than thy word. So take me, Barbara, for thy husband, and fulfill the dear mother's last desire, and give me the hope of teaching thee in the days to come to love me even as I love thee." But for all answer Barbara only turned and laid her hands in his, and slowly raised the wonder of her eyes until they looked straight into his; and the man whose front had never quailed in face of death or danger grew pallid beneath his bronze, and trembled like a leaf in the wind. "What!--Barbara!--Dost really love me, maid? Nay, cheat me not--speak! Dost love me, sweetheart, already?" But Barbara said never a word, nor did Myles ever know more of the secret of her life than in that one supreme moment he read in her steadfast eyes. _ |
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