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Mad Barbara

<div><h1>XII</h1></div> Summer freshness after rain, a splendor of wet shimmering fields and woods, gardens full of a hundred perfumes, a sky changing from azure to opalescent gold on the horizon. The slow sweep of the river through the dream of a summer day. White swans moving over the water; scattered houses with black beams and plaster-work, or warm red walls, lifting their gables amid sleeping trees. Now and again the plash of oars and the sound of voices stealing down some quiet “reach.” Two boats with cushions and banners at the stern were moving up-stream while the day was still in its April hours. They were nearing Richmond, stately in memories and in trees, and Sheen also, where the last of the Tudors delivered up her queenship unto God. The two boats had pulled out from Whitehall stairs that morning, carrying a river-party to my Lord Gore’s house at Bushy. Discretion and the voice of some “back-stairs friend” had hinted that my lord and his son would discover the country preferable to the town until my Lord of Pembroke’s recovery should be assured. The King had lately assumed a prejudice against brawls, and my lord had left this chance indiscretion in the hands of Hortense, who was—for the while—the King. Stephen Gore had collected a few especial friends to go by river and spend some days with him at Bushy. His deaf sister from Kensington had been appointed state duenna for the week. With my lord were two gentlemen of the same political tendencies as himself; my Lady Purcell, fresh and fragrant as a Provence rose; a certain Sir Peter Marden’s wife and daughter, blood relatives of the Gores; and Captain John, his son. Moreover, in the same boat as her mother, with a scarlet cushion under her arm, sat Mistress Barbara, solemn, and dark as some Proserpine to whom the breath of the summer day presaged the shadows of a sadder world. Her mother would probably have left her at the house in Pall Mall had not the girl displayed a sudden tractable cheerfulness that had surprised Lady Anne into searching for motives. Nor had the fertile and intuitive brain of woman far to seek. My Lady Purcell drew her own amused conclusions, nor was she sorry to suspect the girl of such reasonable yet uncharacteristic softness. It so happened that Barbara and John Gore were not shipped in the same boat, the son having taken charge of the second and smaller of the two, with a cargo of luggage and servants, to say nothing of Master Sparkin, who had scrambled into the bow, and amused himself alternately by tickling the neck of the nearest waterman with a feather and dabbling his hands in the water over gunwale. John Gore’s boat proved the faster of the two, and though she started half a mile behind my lord’s, she had drawn up by the time that they had reached Mortlake, much to the satisfaction of Sparkin, who had urged the men on to a race. For a while they pulled stroke and stroke, John Gore laughing and talking to the guests in his father’s boat. Stephen Gore was steering, his sister next him on his left, Lady Purcell on his right. And the moment that the two boats had drawn level, Anne Purcell had touched my lord’s knee with hers and glanced meaningly at Barbara, who had been looking back at the flashing oars of John Gore’s boat. Her mother had been on the watch for suggestions. And in such matters the most commonplace incidents may appear significant. Yet Barbara had merely been watching Sparkin’s drolleries, for one cannot always breathe to the rhythm of tragic verse. “Jack, my boy, when you put to sea with a boat-load of ‘baggage,’ you will find yourself faster than stately dowager-ladened ships.” My lord’s second cousin, my Lady Marden, a fat, happy woman eternally on the verge of laughter, shook the large green fan that ladies used then in the place of a parasol. “Dowagers, indeed! I am sure we look younger than our daughters.” “That is always the case,” said one of my lord’s friends. “I would venture it that Captain John would rather be in our boat,” and she glanced at Barbara as though for confirmation. Anne Purcell’s daughter gazed at the far bank over the lady’s shoulder. “Even a boat-load of aunts and cousins may be duller than a Barbary prison,” quoth my lord, with a play upon words that no one understood. “And even a weevily biscuit better than none—when you’re empty,” said Sparkin, who seemed to consider himself perfectly justified in airing his wit. But seeing that the venture drew a sharp and ominous glance from the great gentleman in the other boat, Sparkin became suddenly oblivious to its presence, and returned to tickling the brown neck of the man who pulled the bow oar—an act that stamped him as the meanest of opportunists, seeing that the man could not express himself in the presence of “quality.” The boats were still moving side by side when Mistress Catharine Gore, the deaf duenna, began asking questions in her shrill, aggressive voice. “Who’s that boy, Stephen?” My lord assumed an alarmed look and held up a silencing hand. “My dear Kate,” he shouted in her ear, “do not ask embarrassing questions.” His sister’s face betrayed a sudden gleam of shocked intelligence that made my lord’s fooling appear more piquant. Deafness had developed a habit of irritability in her, and she was accustomed to blurt out her opinions in a voice that she probably intended for a whisper. “You don’t say so, Stephen! I am astonished that your son should have the effrontery. But these sailors—” The other ladies began to giggle. My lord nudged his sister vigorously with his knee. “Jack brought the boy home from America with him.” “Why don’t you speak louder, Stephen? What did you say her name was?” But as she discovered that they were trying to hide their laughter behind fans and coat-sleeves, Mistress Catharine Gore gave her brother one stare, and relapsed into a silence that was not altogether amiable. Nor did John Gore look the complaisant son smiling at his father’s waggery. He nodded to his men, who quickened at the oars, making the boat forge ahead of my lord’s galley. Barbara’s eyes met the sea-captain’s as he glanced back for a moment to look at something, perhaps at her. She was glad and yet sorry that they were not together, for the secret that she concealed made his nearness a martyrdom and a season of suspense. How could she keep the consciousness of that grim blood-debt before her soul, with the beat of the ripples against the boat and the flash of the sunlight on the water? She felt too close to humanity to be able to look into her own haunted heart. These laughing, chattering women, these mercurial, pleasure-loving men! She could only sit there in a silence as in a trance, and let the shores and the tide of life glide by, until she could wake in the tragic loneliness of solitude—and of self. The garden of my Lord Gore’s house at Bushy came down to the river with a sweep of perfect sward. There was a stone boat-house with quaint copper dragons on the recessed gable ends, and a gilded vane shaped like a ship in sail. The steps that led up from the river had statues of fauns and wood-nymphs upon their pillars, and along the bank weeping-willows trailed their boughs in the brown water of the shallows. The garden itself had all that quaint formalism, that stately simplicity that was part of the lives of some of the Old-World gentry. A great stretch of grass cut into four squares by gravel paths, with closely clipped bays and yews set rhythmically along the walks. On the north, an ancient yew alley, a gallery of green gloom. On the south, a broad flower border, full of roses, pinks, and stocks, and all manner of flowers and herbs. On the west, the stone terrace of the house, with orange-trees in tubs ranged behind the balustrade. In the centre of all, where the four walks met, a fountain playing, throwing a plume of spray from the bosom of a river-god. John Gore’s boat, half a mile ahead of my lord’s galley, disembarked first at the steps, so that the servants were able to clear the baggage into the house and help in preparing that most essential of all incidents—dinner. John Gore sent Sparkin off to the kitchen, and passed the time pacing the gravel walks, with the river before him and the air sweet with the perfumes of the herbs. The stateliness of the place, its repose and opulence, had a strong charm for the man after rough years of voyaging and the squalid loneliness of prison. He contrasted it with the weird brilliance and fragmental beauty of the countries of the Crescent. Nothing could seem more rich to him than those splendid lawns, like green samite spread without seam or wrinkle. Even the gilded vane on the boat-house had memories, for he could remember coveting it as a child, and the thing may have suggested the life of those who go down to the sea in ships. John Gore saw in season the flash of my lord’s oars, the bluff bow of the galley pushing the ripples aside, the banner floating over the stern. Going to the water-steps, he stood there and waited, hat in hand, the quiet dignity of such a man seeming in keeping with such a scene. With one foot on the gunwale, he gave a hand in turn to my lord’s guests, while the rowers held the boat in place by using their oars as poles. The character of the different women might have been guessed by the way each accepted the curtesy of the man upon the steps. Anne Purcell smiled in his face with a full-blown and fragrant vanity. Mrs. Catharine Gore gave him a severe stare. My Lady Marden might have melted his dignity with her good-humor; her daughter faltered with assumed shyness, looking at her feet and not into John Gore’s eyes. As for Barbara, she ignored his hand unconcernedly, gazing straight before her with a straight mouth and a passionless face. The gentlemen followed, John Gore leaving them to their own legs. He had turned and climbed the steps close on Barbara’s heels, noticing, as a man does, the poise of her head and the proud youth in her figure. A high-born and imperious spirit seemed proper from one who walked between those stiff and stately trees. John Gore would not have wished for a hoyden in such a setting. The party moved up the central walk toward the house, my Lady Marden verbosely pleased with everything that she saw. “But there were no peacocks! Surely that sweet terrace should have been a proper place for the birds to show their tails! But perhaps my Lord Gore did not like their voices?” My lord replied that he saw so many peacocks at Whitehall that there was nothing singular or distinctive about having such commonplace birds on show. He would send for a barge-load if my Lady Marden would promise to imitate a pea-hen in her dress. Anne Purcell looked tried by the fat woman’s excessive and loquacious amiability. She had Mrs. Catharine Gore for a stimulating “cup of bitters,” Mrs. Kate, whose wood billet of a figure looked fit only for a great wheel farthingale. My lord’s two gentlemen friends were walking one on either side of my Lady Marden’s daughter, who pretended to be embarrassed, and was not. She had a black patch at the corner of a very suggestive mouth, and a figure that did not promise prudery. For the rest, John Gore and Barbara Purcell were left pacing side by side like two grave and staid strangers walking up the aisle of a church. The party dined in the long salon whose windows opened upon the terrace with its row of orange-trees. My Lady Marden careered in her conversation like a fat mare turned out to grass. My lord alone appeared inclined to keep step with her. After dinner there were wines and fruit: wines of Spain and Burgundy; peaches, nectarines, apricots, and grapes. After the fruit and wine, those who desired could steal a siesta, for the river air is fresh after rain, and mature appetites minister at the altar of Morpheus. The two gentlemen were amusing themselves by making hot love to the younger Marden, and watching the expression of keen curiosity and chagrin on Mrs. Catharine Gore’s face. To be able to see so many suggestive things, and to hear nothing! What more tantalizing position for a duenna, and a spinster! John Gore could not keep back a smile as he watched the drama. He rose, and went and stood by Barbara’s chair with the quiet simplicity of a man who was not self-conscious. “Do you remember the old place? I suppose you have been here—often—since I was last here.” “No, not for a long while.” “Would you like to see the garden?” She glanced up at him and rose. “Yes.” And that was all they said to each other for fully three minutes. Probably their interest in glass houses, herb beds, and flowers was a wholly subordinate affair, yet it served the purpose of bringing two people together who desired to be near each other for very different reasons. John Gore may have thought the girl curiously reserved and silent. Yet he did not wish her otherwise, preferring her swarthy, pale-skinned aloofness to red-faced and commonplace good temper. Men who have seen the world have little use of people who let their insignificant souls bolt from their mouths like a mouse out of a hole. Hearts easily won are easily lost. The open field has no lure for the imagination; high walls and a mass of dusky trees pretend to hide all manner of mystery. Neither of them referred to the brawl of the other night—Barbara, for reasons known to her own heart; John Gore, from a sense of delicacy and chivalrous understanding. He began to talk to her of the days when they had been mere children, and the subject served to sweep away some of the reserve that chilled the air between them. They were in the fruit-garden, with its high, red-brick walls, when John Gore recalled to her an incident of their irresponsible youth. “Do you remember old Jock, the head gardener?” She looked at him with a slight frown of thought. “Jock, the Scotchman?” “The old fellow with the bandy legs, and the head that lolled to and fro when he walked. It was just here I played that trick on him. You were standing there—by the door; I was behind a bush with the squirt. I can see you laughing now, and the flick of your green skirt as you bolted into the yew alley.” She smiled, but her face grew grave again abruptly, as though reproved by some power within. “How long ago it seems! We have changed so much! And you have been nearly over the whole world!” He glanced at her as she spoke, finding by instinct in her a sense of something to be overcome. It might be the natural strength of reserve in her. Yet she appeared to him like a girl brought up in some fanatical home where laughter was a sign of carnal inclinations. Her heart might begin to smile, but some habit of self-repression stifled the impulse before it could mature. “You will tell me about your voyages?” “If they are of any interest to you.” Her eyes met his, and then swerved away with a flash of wayward feeling that puzzled him. “I should like to hear everything. It has an interest for me. And then—you were in a Moorish prison?” He looked into the distance with the air of a man ready to speak of his very self. “Prison. That is an experience that grinds the folly out of the heart. A man is walled up with that strange riddle of a thing—himself. It made me learn to understand those old hermits in the deserts. For the devils who tempted them, and whom they fought and cast out into the night, were the devils a man carried about with him in his own heart. Prison makes a man a wild beast—or a philosopher.” “More often a beast, Jack,” said my lord, who appeared at the gate leading into the yew walk, fanning himself with a big fan that he had borrowed from Anne Purcell. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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