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Mad Barbara

<div><h1>XVI</h1></div> In the music-room a sudden silence had fallen, like the pause between the two stanzas of a song. Barbara, seated on an oak settle with a cushion of crimson velvet, let her hands rest idly on the key-board of the harpsichord. Her eyes were raised as though her thoughts had been carried beyond the four walls of the room by the music her fingers had drawn from the keys. Yet it was not the pose of one who was dreaming, for she was looking into a mirror that hung on the wall above the harpsichord. In that mirror—she had hung it there with her own hands—she could see the greater part of the room reflected with all the minute brilliance of a Dutch “interior”: the polished floor, the oak table, John Gore’s red coat, the brown wainscoting; even the vivid grass beyond the window, and the massed colors of a bed of summer flowers. John Gore was sitting in the window-seat, and she could watch his face in the mirror on the wall. He was bending forward and looking at her with an intentness that betrayed his ignorance that she had him at a disadvantage, in that he saw only the curve of a cheek, while Barbara had everything before her. His elbows were on his knees, his hands knitted together between them, his sword lying on the window-seat, the scarf a knot of brilliant color like a great red rose. He was a man in whom even a child would have found great strength, and a kind of quiet sternness that mellowed when he smiled. John Gore had come to her to say good-bye, and she knew the meaning of his coming, the meaning that had come kindling in those eyes of his since the duel that wet night in June. It was a mere man’s trick to be near her, and to turn a month’s absence to the service of the heart. And they were alone together in that room where she had found her father dead—the room that might prove an altar of sacrifice. Barbara’s white face seemed near to tragedy as she gazed steadily into the mirror on the wall. Every fibre of her heart had been strung to a tenseness that made each heart-beat hard and perceptible. She had put pity from her with the dry cold eyes of a fatalist and the fierce apathy of one driven onward by force of fate. She had faltered too long, clung too treacherously to an incredulous caution. Life had become a dull misery for her, full of infinite doubt and sudden passionate impulses that carried her to the edge of the unknown. Only to grasp the truth, to tear aside the veil of sentiment, to end the uncertainty of it, even if it should be forever! Her heart was emptying of the power to hate. She had begun to distrust herself. She had to scourge herself with memories, as a fanatic uses a knotted whip upon the flesh. “Is that the end?” The silence had seemed a silence of hours instead of moments, and she started at the sound of his voice, pressing a hand over her bosom with an involuntary spasm of swift consciousness. She was wearing a loose gown with a mass of lace over the breasts. There was something more tangible hidden there than a memory. “I have no voice to sing; I shall only remind you of a missel-thrush.” “But the harpsichord?” “The notes are all harsh and the wires rusty.” She glanced at the mirror and saw the same intentness in his eyes. “Then you do not play often?” “No.” “Why not?” “My mother is no music-lover. And my fingers have grown stiff.” “Why should that have been?” “I have hardly touched the key-board since—my father died.” She watched him in the mirror, but he did not change his posture or betray anything upon his face. It seemed stern, and a little sad, the face of a man with depths beneath a surface of reserve. “I can understand that—in measure.” His voice struck a chord in her, as a voice that sings may set a wire vibrating. “It was here—in this room.” “Here?” “Yes. It was I who found him. His hands had touched these notes the day before. He had sung the song that I have played to you.” Upon the panel of the upturned lid was a picture painted in an oval scroll of flowers, a sensuous scene from a fête galante with men and women dancing and looking love. The colors and the gestures of each minute figure seemed to burn in upon the girl’s brain, as small things will when life hangs upon a look or upon a word. Barbara rose slowly, pushing the settle back, and gazing into the mirror at the man’s dark and thoughtful face. “It was some unknown sword that killed him.” She had turned, and his eyes met hers. “Nothing was ever discovered.” “Nothing?” “That was what seemed so strange.” She stood a moment gazing through the window at the flowers in the border, yet trying to penetrate by sheer instinct beyond the man’s quiet dignity. John Gore remembered his father’s innuendos. It had been a pitiable affair for an innocent girl. It would have been even more pitiable had she been confronted with what my lord had hinted to be the truth. “Does the thrust of a sword hurt? I have often wondered.” Her eyes were fixed upon him, as though she had discovered the slightest flicker of uneasiness, a length of silence that suggested premeditation. “Why think of such things?” “One cannot always help one’s thoughts; they come like the wind through the window.” John Gore leaned his head upon his hand, his fingers tugging at his hair, much like a school-boy baffled by a pile of figures. Man of action, and of the world that he was, his ways were often quaintly boyish. “There may be one pang, perhaps.” “The thought of steel in one’s body makes one shiver.” She seemed to persist in her morbid melancholy like one whose thoughts move in a circle. “Is that the sword with which you fought Lord Pembroke?” “That? Yes.” “Let me look at it. Strange that such bodkin can be so deadly.” He took it for a whim of hers, and humored her, hiding the pity in his eyes. “Why, it is not much heavier than a gentleman’s cane!” She held it in her two hands, balancing it, and looking at the silver work upon the sheath. John Gore watched her, grave-eyed and compassionate. “It is said that the sword suits itself to the age.” “Oh!” And she drew back innocently, step by step. “Broad and trenchant; slim and subtle.” “Then you would call this a sword for a treacherous hand?” “No, rather a tool for the man with a brain. Any fool can fight with a club.” She drew the blade sharply from the scabbard, still moving backward step by step till the table was between her and John Gore. “It was some such sword as this that killed my father.” “Perhaps.” He shirked the subject, as though afraid of paining her or abetting her in her distemper. “If I could only know the truth! The mystery of it haunts me.” She laid the sword upon the table, quite close to her hand, so that she could snatch at it if things came to such a pass. “Some parts of life are better forgotten.” “If we can forget.” A great impulse stirred in him, bidding him go to her and take her hands. “The bitter things remain, and with them—for contrast—the silliest trifles.” He looked up at her with a brightening of the eyes. “Yes; why, Heaven alone knows! I can remember kissing my mother when she lay dead. And with the same vividness I can remember a wooden horse I had as a boy, a gray horse with a brown saddle painted on his back, and his nostrils a gay scarlet. Whenever I see a horse I think of that wooden horse’s nose.” Barbara gave a queer, short laugh, her face firing with sudden animation. “That is just what life is. And sometimes we see the same thing again—afterward. I can call to mind looking into the window of a goldsmith’s shop, and seeing upon a little green board a short gold chain with a knot of pearls for a button. Why I should have noticed and remembered that one thing I can’t tell. But I saw its brother chain one night this summer.” His eyes met hers, calm, steady, and unperturbed. “Where?” “On the cloak you wore that night.” “A cloak?” “Yes, at Hortense Mancini’s, when you came in wet with the rain. And I thought that one of the gold chains seemed missing.” She watched his face, her hand going instinctively toward her bosom. “Strange! That chain probably belonged once to the cloak I wore.” “Ah!” “There was a chain missing and a small scar in the cloth, as though it had been torn away. The loss might easily be answered for.” She steadied herself against the table, feeling every muscle in her rigid, yet ready to tremble when the end had come. “You had worn that cloak before?” “I?” He glanced up at her curiously, struck by her white, set face and the harsh straining of her voice. “Yes.” “No. The cloak was borrowed, if the truth concerns you.” “Borrowed?” “I came home from sea with one shirt, one coat, and the other part of me in like proportion. My father’s wardrobe came to the rescue.” “Then the cloak was my Lord Gore’s?” “Yes; and his man probably stole the chain and sold it.” He laughed; but on looking up at her again a silent, questioning wonder swept the lighter lines aside. She was standing motionless behind the table, her hands fixed upon the edge thereof, her eyes staring at nothing like the eyes of one in a trance. Yet even as he looked at her a great spasm of emotion seemed to sweep across her face. She turned without a word to him and fled out of the room. John Gore found himself looking at the table behind which she had stood and at the sword that lay unsheathed thereon. The inexplicable swiftness of her mood went utterly beyond him, save that the words my lord had spoken flashed up like letters of fire upon the wall. He rose and went to the door of the music-room, moving slowly as one weighted with thoughts that bear heavily upon the heart. The garden was empty, save for its closely clipped bays. Like some wayward cloud-shadow she had passed it and was gone. But Barbara had fled to her room with a tumult of deep feeling within her heart. It was as though something had broken within her brain, letting forth infinite tenderness that welled up into poignant tears. She went in and fell on her knees beside her bed. And if her heart found utterance it was in the one short cry: “Thank God!” <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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