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Mad Barbara

<div><h1>XXX</h1></div> John Gore let his heart have its way that night, for the impulse in him was too strong to be withstood. Yet, like the cool and dogged man he was, he chastened the adventurous passion of a boy with the quiet hardihood of one who has learned to hold a rough ship’s company in awe of him. Unbuckling his sword, he thrust it into the grass under the tree, for the thing would only have cumbered him, and after drawing off his heavy boots and coat he went quietly to the bridge and across it to the court-yard gate. As on the night when he had waited there with Mr. Pepys, he could see a light burning in a window near the ground and the shadow of some one moving in the room within. Taking a couple of steps back, he made a running jump at the gate, and got his hands on the top thereof with hardly a sound to convict him of clumsiness. The rest was easy, and he straddled the gate and then dropped softly into the court-yard. His chief fear was lest the dog should hear him and give tongue. But there was not so much as the rattle of a chain to show that the beast was on the alert. Moving along the court-yard wall that edged the moat, he came to the terraceway that ran along the western front of the house. The place was smothered with weeds and brambles, the brambles catching his ankles like gins, so that he was constrained to go warily and set his teeth and his temper against the pricks. The wall fell to a couple of feet where the terrace began, giving a glimpse of the dim black waters of the moat. John Gore halted when the outlines of the tower rose above him against the night sky. The western face thereof came down to the terrace stones, and in the western face was the window at which he had seen the hands appear. Crossing the terrace, he leaned against the plinth of the tower, almost burying himself in the ivy that hung there in masses. But for the very faint shivering of the leaves he could hear no sound, not even the sound of a voice from the far wing where the couple appeared to have their quarters. John Gore ran his hands along the plinth, feeling for the main stems of the ivy where they had lifted and cocked the flagstones of the terrace. These stems were stout and tough as a great ship’s cable, forked here and there so that a man’s foot might rest, and sending out a net-work of ropes over the tower. John Gore thought of Sparkin, and how he would have laid a hatful of gold on the boy’s pluck and sinew for such a climb. But since there was no Sparkin to venture such a climb for him, he pulled his stockings up, took a look at the precipice overhead, and staked his neck on a scramble into the dark. A rat would have thought nothing of such a climb, for you may find them nesting high up in the ivy about a house. A daring boy might have ventured it by daylight, but to scale such a place at night might have made the most monkeyish seaman swear that he was not yet tired of the taverns. John Gore was not a man who had trained as a sea-captain by drinking wine in his state-room and strutting in scarlet upon his quarter-deck. He could make the tops as briskly as any man in his ship’s company, and carry tarry hands and shiny clothes to the credit of his seamanship. But his heart never felt so near his mouth before, nor his fingers so desperately tenacious, as when he had climbed some forty feet up that tower of Thorn. The ivy stems were smaller and gave less grip, while the sheer mass above him made the black void behind and below seem full of a sense of suction drawing him toward a smashing fall upon the terrace stones. He pressed his chest to the brickwork, breathing hard through dilated nostrils, his teeth set, and his hands clinched upon the cordage of the creeper. His brain grew steadier anon, and he went on, slowly and grimly, like a mountaineer laboriously and patiently clinging to narrow niches in the rock. Another ten feet brought him to one of the windows. It was barred, but the bar gave him something to hold to, and he found a knotted stem beneath that jutted out like a corbel. He rested there awhile, listening, and he could hear a dull, rhythmic sound above, as though some one were pacing to and fro in an upper room. Then he went on again, even more slowly and perilously than before, thinking what a mad fool he was, and trying to forget that the return journey was before him. He was so close to the window now, and so grimly intent on keeping his hold, that he had no instinct left in him but the instinct of self-preservation. His whole consciousness seemed in his fingers and his toes. At last he felt one hand go over the window-ledge, and, lifting himself slowly, he got a grip of the stanchions and drew himself up till he could rest his elbows on the sill. He hung there dizzy and out of breath, yet with a sense of infinite comfort at having his hand upon an iron bar. His fingers were bleeding, and his stockings torn into holes at the toes. Life and the full memory of things came back to him as he lay on the sill of the window. It was no moment for elaborate curtesy, as though he were in a velvet coat and bowing himself gallantly on the threshold of a great lady’s salon. One word came to him as the blood steadied in his brain, and he uttered it in a half whisper, as though it would have the power of a spell. “Barbara!” He heard some one move, and the creaking of woodwork. “Barbara, is it you?” There was a rustling sound against the wall, and two hands came up to him out of the darkness. “John—John Gore?” “Dear, you should know my voice.” “You, John! is it you? Oh, but you frightened me! I heard something climbing, and was shivering in a corner.” Now John Gore seemed suddenly to forget the eighty feet of space below him. His heart had given a great leap and was drumming against his ribs, for the truth that he had discovered went far beyond his dreams. The window was cut in the thickness of the wall, and the stanchions set deeply in it, so that he contrived to drag himself over the sill and wedge himself there with his face close to the bars. “Thank God,” he said, “that I dared this climb! It was a climb into the dark, dear, but I have found more than ever I sought.” He saw her hands come up to the bars. They touched his face, and then drew back as though she had not thought him so near. Her heart was so full of manifold emotions that for the moment she could not think. The suddenness of it had dizzied her, and yet through the strange tumult of it all she felt an infinite sweet joy. “Barbe!” His voice roused her suddenly to a sense of keen reality. “Speak softly, or they may hear. You—you should not have risked so much.” “Barbe, why are you here, and why did they tell me lies?” “Lies?” “Yes, may God confound them! Come close to the window, dear; you can trust me to the death.” He heard her catch a short, sharp breath as though some one had dashed icy water upon her bosom. “John, I can’t tell you—I can’t!” “Why, child?—come?” “Don’t ask me—don’t ask me anything to-night. I cannot bear it, when you have risked so much.” He could not see her, not even her hands, but he felt that she was very close to him. Assuredly this was not the Barbara of the old sullen days? Her infinite dumb distress went to his heart like wine. “Barbe!” She could not answer him for the moment, her thoughts in a tumult with the miserable secrets of the past. “I cannot—I cannot!” “Tell me, dear; you can trust me.” She was leaning her arms against the wall and her head against her arms. “Oh, I was mad, John, and I think I had no heart—then. You must have heard; they must have given you some reason for this.” The wrath in him flashed out for an instant. “Whether you were mad or not, child, I have no need to ask. They had put me off with lies, and but for God’s mercy I should never have chanced upon the truth.” He heard her move with a little sound of anguish in the throat. “The truth—what truth?” “Why, that you were never mad, Barbara; God even pardon me for uttering the word.” “Mad—only that?” “And does that mean nothing to me—to-night.” She saw that he was only half wise as to the miserable intrigue that had let blood forth, blood that had dimmed her vision and filled her with a hate that now made her shudder. His tenderness would out, beating about her like mysterious movement in the air, making her dizzy and in terror of the past. “Of your goodness, John, don’t ask me anything—don’t ask me anything to-night.” She broke down utterly, and though she tried to stifle it, the sound of her weeping would not be smothered. Pity of it went to the man’s heart. A great tremor swept across his face. He stretched out an arm between the bars into the darkness of the room. “Barbe, I ask nothing—I’ll know nothing—till you wish. Don’t weep, dear heart, when I cannot come at you to comfort.” His tenderness beat in on her, so that she seemed to master herself, only to fall into a new fear, and that lest he should be discovered. “You must go, John. Why am I keeping you here? If they were to come!” No words could have made him hardier in his daring. “Take no care for me, Barbe. This is but the beginning of it all.” She put up her hands to him in appeal. “No, no; they would kill you, perhaps!” “I am not so easily dealt with, dear. Answer me one thing. Some brute struck you to-night?” She leaned her head against the wall. “Oh, that is nothing—nothing.” “Nothing!” And she could picture the bronzed grimness of his face. “Tell me, Barbe—the big man, or the little crooked rogue?” “The big man.” “Now I know my dog.” The hardness of the window-stone, and the cramp and stiffness in his muscles, forced him to remember that he had the descent to make, and that it would not do to waste his strength. “I must go now, Barbe,” he said, “before I get too stiff.” She seemed to realize suddenly all the peril of that dark descent, and the dear hardihood that had brought him to her. “John, if you should slip!” Her tone held him there, loath to leave her when her voice thrilled so. “No, I have done my scrambling about a ship’s gear. Next time I shall bring a rope.” She put up her hands to the bars. “But it is so dark, and so deep. Can’t I help you, John?” He hung there, and, seeing her hands so near, stretched one of his to meet them. “What have you in the room, Barbe?” “There are the sheets on the bed.” “How many?” She climbed down and pulled the bedclothes on to the floor. “Two sheets and the blanket.” “A short three fathoms. They would help me over the worst piece. Are you strong enough to knot them into a rope?” “Yes, John—yes.” She set to work in the dark, rolling the sheets up and knotting the ends as stoutly as she could. Yet she mistrusted the knots, lest they should slip and dash the man to the stones below. And in her dread of it she pondered the case, and then looked up at the window. “Have you a knife?” “Surely, being a sailor.” He fumbled for it, cramped and wedged in as he was, and dropped it down upon the bed. Barbara felt for it, and, cutting off two thick strands of her hair, bound down the ends of the knots with the strands so that they should hold more surely under his weight. “Here, John.” She mounted the bed and held the end to him, and he knotted it about the bar as firmly as a seaman could. “Can you reach it when I have gone? Try.” She reached out her hands. “Yes, easily. Take the knife back. They might find it, and suspect.” Their hands touched and thrilled in the darkness of the night. Then John Gore drew the sheet rope out, trying the knots to see that they were firm. “What have you bound them with? Why, child, you have cut your hair!” “Only two small pieces.” “Then the rope is blessed, dear. Good-night.” “Good-night.” “Trust to me, dear; I shall have you away from here before long. Trust me in your heart.” Barbara stood close to the wall, the anguish of the past, with all its memories, flooding back on her, now that he was going. She thought of that secret that seemed to flow between them like a river of doom. Her heart grew chilled and afraid with dread of the truth. “John!” He hung there, waiting. “You must not come again, John. Promise me; it is risking your life, and I—” “And you?” “Don’t ask me to tell you; I have not the courage; it was all so terrible, and the truth was too great for me. Promise you will not come.” “If I promised that,” he said, simply, “I might as well drop and end it.” “Oh—but—John—” “Barbe, good-night.” And she felt the tightening of the rope against the bar. “I cannot part with such wild talk from you. Good-night. God hold you in His keeping.” She heard the rustle of leaves and the dull chafing of the sheet against the stone. Leaning against the wall and listening, her heart seemed to beat but thrice in a minute while she waited to hear whether he were safe or no. The rope slackened, and she heard the faint rustle of leaves go slowly down the tower. Then all was silent, and there was nothing left but the empty night. Suddenly, as though bending beneath some great weight of humiliation and utter helplessness, she sank down on the bed with her head resting against the wall. A great shudder ran through her, yet no tears came; for all the dreariness of the hour seemed lost in the miserable menace of the past. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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