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Mad Barbara

<div><h1>III</h1></div> Had Lady Purcell, herself unseen, followed her daughter to her room, she would have been astonished by the sudden transformation that swept over her so soon as the door closed. The apathetic figure straightened into keen aliveness; the look of vacuity vanished from the face. It was like a sudden transition from damp, listless November to the starlit brilliance of a frosty night. “Dust and ashes at two-and-twenty!” My Lord Gore’s echoing of Biblical pessimism seemed to have lost its appropriateness so far as Barbara Purcell was concerned. There was nothing listless about the intense and rather swarthy face that looked down into the garden with its white-pillared music-room and its October memories. It was more the face of some impassioned child of destiny striving to gaze into the mystery of the coming years. The acting of a part to delude the world, and to make men ignore her as a spiritless girl. The merciless fanaticism of youth watching, and ever watching, behind all that assumption of listlessness and sloth. Then, in those solitary interludes when she had no part to play, the restrained passion in her breaking like lava to the surface, filling her eyes with a species of prophetic fire. In a little carved cabinet of black oak she kept some of those relics that made for her a ritual of revenge—her father’s shirt stained with blood, some of the dead flowers she had found beside him on the floor, a piece of the cloth that had covered him that autumn morning. Almost nightly she would take these things from their hiding-place, spread them upon her bed, and kneel before them as a papist might kneel before a relic or the symbol of the Sacred Heart. As for the curb of gold with its knot of pearls, she carried it always in her bosom, sewn up in a case of scarlet silk. Distrusting every one, hardly sane in the personal passion of her purpose, she never parted with the talisman, but treasured its possible magic for herself. Yet what had she discovered all these many months? The knowledge that her mother had put aside her black stuffs gladly, a growing sense of antipathy toward the man who had been her father’s friend. She could remember the time when my Lord Stephen had carried her through the garden on his shoulder; bought her sweetmeats, green stockings, and jessamy gloves; and even served as her valentine with a big man’s playful gallantry toward a child. She had thought him a splendid person then, but now—all had changed for her, and the analysis of her own instinctive repulsion left her obstinately baffled. She had no mandate from the past for hating him; on the contrary, facts might have stood to prove that she was his debtor. She remembered how she had caught him praying beside her father’s coffin, and how he had risen up with a strange spasm of the face and blundered from the room. He had offered money for the discovery of the truth, importuned magistrates, petitioned the King, put his own servants in black. No man could have done more loyally as a friend. Yet nothing had been discovered. Some unknown sword had passed through Lionel Purcell’s body. The very motive remained concealed. The world had buried him, gossiped awhile, and then forgotten. But Barbara had a heart that did not know how to forget. She had Southern blood, the passionate heirloom of an Elizabethan wooing. The Spanish wine of her ancestry had given her a flash of fanaticism and the swarthy melancholy of her comely face. And the whole promise of her youth had bent itself, like some dark-eyed zealot—to a purpose that had none of the softer and more sensuous moods of life in view. Why should she hate this big, bland, stately mortal, this Stephen Gore who had no enemies and many friends? That was a question she often asked herself. Was it because she had been caught by the suspicion that he might console the widow for the husband’s death? There was no palpable sin in the possibility, and yet it angered her, even though she had no great love for her mother. A supersensitive delicacy made her jealous for the dead. The very buxom effulgence of my lord’s vitality seemed to insult the shadow that haunted the house for her. As she sat at the window looking down upon the garden the sun sank low in the west, throwing a broad radiance under the branches of the trees. Their round boles were bathed in light. The figures that moved about the park were touched with a weird brilliance, so that a red coat shone like a ruby, a blue like a sapphire, a silver-gray like an opal iridescent in the sun. There was much of the charm of one of Watteau’s pictures, yet with a greater significance of light and shadow. Dusk began to fall. A hand fumbled at the latch of the door, and a figure in black entered bearing a tray. It was Mrs. Jael, her mother’s woman, a stout little body with a florid face and an overpolite way with her that repelled cynics. She had amiable blue eyes that seemed to see nothing, a loose mouth, and a big bosom. Her personality appeared to have soaked itself in sentimentality as a stewed apple soaks itself in syrup. Barbara did not turn her head. “Why, dear heart, all in the dusk! Here’s a little dish or two.” “Set them down on the table.” “You’ll get your death chill—there, sitting at that window—” The woman fidgeted officiously about the room, as though trying to insinuate her sympathy betwixt the girl’s silence and reserve. Her dilatory habit only roused Barbara’s impatience. Mrs. Jael’s sly, succulent motherliness had lost its power of deceiving, so far as Anne Purcell’s daughter was concerned. “Light the candles.” She remained motionless while the woman bustled to and fro. “Thanks. You can leave me, Jael.” The tire-woman could meet a snub with the most obtuse good temper. “Should you be tired, Mistress Barbara, I can come and put you to bed, my dear, while my lady is at the playhouse.” “I am old enough to put myself to bed, am I not?” Mrs. Jael laughed as though bearing with a peevish miss of twelve. “Dear life, of course you are.” And she broke into a fat giggle as though something had piqued her sense of humor. Barbara’s face remained turned toward the window. “You can go, Jael.” The woman curtesied and obeyed. Her face lost its good-humor, however, as quickly as a buffoon’s loses its stage grin when he has turned his back upon the audience. She stood outside the door a moment, listening, and then went softly down the passage to my lady’s room, with its stamped leather hangings in green and gold, its great carved bed and Eastern rugs. Anne Purcell was seated before her mirror, her long, brown hair, of which she was mightily proud, falling about her almost to the ground. She had a stick of charcoal in her hand, and was leaning forward over the dressing-table, crowded with its trinkets, scent-flasks, and pomade-boxes, staring at her face in the glass as she heightened the expressiveness of her eyes. Her glance merely shifted from the reflection of her own face to that of Mrs. Jael’s figure as she entered the room. They were not a little alike, these two women, save that the one boasted more grace and polish; the other more pliability and unctuousness, and perhaps more cunning. “Get me my red velvet gown from the cupboard, Jael.” “Yes, my lady.” “Have you seen the girl?” Mrs. Jael’s head and shoulders had disappeared into the depths of the carved-oak wardrobe. Her voice came muffled as from a cave. “Yes, my lady.” “What was she doing with herself?” “Sitting at her window, poor dear, and looking very low and sulky.” Anne Purcell turned her head to and fro as she scrutinized herself critically in the glass. She still looked young, with her high color and her sleek skin, her large eyes and full red mouth. Her style of comeliness seemed suited to the times, plump and pleasurable, full and free in outline and expression. My Lord of Gore had no reason to feel displeased at the prospect of possessing such a widow. “What do you make of the girl, Jael?” The tire-woman had turned from the wardrobe with the gown of red velvet over her arm. “The child is strange, my lady, and out of health. You might say that she had been moon-struck, or that she was watching for a ghost.” Anne Purcell moved restlessly in her chair. “Sometimes, Jael, I think that Barbara is a little mad. I am ready for you to dress my hair.” Mrs. Jael spread the gown upon the bed. “She doesn’t seem to have a spark of life in her, poor dear. I’m half scared often that she should do herself some harm.” My lady was watching the woman’s face in the mirror. “Oh—” “She’s always moping by herself like a sick bird. It often makes me wonder, my lady—” “Well?” “What Mistress Barbara does all those hours when she is alone. I have tried looking—” “Through the key-hole, Jael?” “Your pardon, but it is my concern for the child. I’ve started awake at night thinking I heard her cry out, and I have dreamed of seeing her in her shroud.” A flash of cynicism swept across Anne Purcell’s face. But she did not rebuke the woman for her sentimental canting. “The girl ought to be watched.” “Yes, my lady.” “She will not have Betty to sleep with her.” A sly suggestive smile on the face above hers in the mirror warned her that Mrs. Jael understood her in every detail. “What were you going to say, Jael? There is no need for us to beat about the bush.” “There is the little closet, my lady.” “Yes, next to Mistress Barbara’s room.” “It used to have a door—leading to the bedroom. But Sir Lionel—poor gentleman—had it filled in.” “Yes, I remember.” “Only with double panelling, my lady, and the woodwork has shrunk a little. I happened to notice it last night when I went in there in the dark to get a blanket, and Mistress Barbara’s candle was burning.” The eyes of the two women met in the looking-glass. Mrs. Jael’s face gave forth a sunny, insinuating smile. “It is not my nature, my lady, to spy and shuffle, but—” “If you scraped a little of the wood away with a knife?” “I don’t feel happy about Mistress Barbara, my lady. And if—” “Be careful, Jael, you are pulling my hair.” “A hundred pardons, my lady.” “If you should see anything strange, it is well that I should know.” <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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