Under Two Skies (22 page)

Their mothers' curiosity mounted to fever-heat The moment the mud would bear them they called in person upon Barbara. Idle, gossiping women are not necessarily unfeeling; what they found made some of them shed tears on the walk home.

Barbara was the shadow of her former self—herself of a few weeks ago. Thin and pale and bright-eyed, irascible, listless, limp, she was indeed a proper object for compassion; and compassion was the last thing Barbara could stand. Yet, though the callers were sent away with their sympathy still on their hands, they did
not toss it to the winds for that reason. It was impossible to resent the schoolmistress's incivility while the schoolmistress looked so. One or two of them felt for her all the more, and sent the children to school with little presents of butter and eggs and apples. These offerings Barbara accepted ungraciously enough from the inoffensive bearers, but afterwards grew ashamed, and sent those children home with courteous, grateful little letters. All such presents, however, were invariably the servant's perquisites.

Barbara's servant—a mere girl herself, no older than her mistress—had come with her from Kyneton. She knew very well that her mistress was eating her heart out, and she knew why, though not from Barbara, who, as we have seen, was by no means free from pride. The whole township was more or less in possession of this fact and its obvious reason. But Annie, the maid, knew one little circumstance which no one else guessed; this she longed to disclose to some sympathetic ear, and at last she did disclose it to the motherly soul that kept house for Sergeant Whitty.

They had been discussing poor Barbara rather freely, but very far from unkindly.

“Mrs. Waters,” Annie said, “shall I tell you a secret?”

“If you like, my dear. You know I can keep a
secret. But I don't ask you to tell me nothing.” Mrs. Waters was old and guarded.

“Well, but I must! It mustn't go no further, and I know it won't; but I can't keep it to myself no longer. Did you ever guess that my mistress and your sergeant was acquainted before?”

“Are you
sure
?” cried Mrs. Waters.

“Positive. Two years ago.”

Mrs. Waters threw up her hands. “That accounts for everything!”

“For what?”

“For his pacing the room, or the verandy, one or t'other, till all hours, night after night—for a hundred other things—for goodness knows what all! You mean he was in love with her?”

Annie nodded.

“Mark my words, then, Annie: he's in love with her still, but too honourable to speak it! And he as fine a man as ever walked: and she going throwing her heart away on a villain that's cleared out and left her!”

What Mrs. Waters went on to say there is no need to record. She inveighed vehemently against the idiocy of women generally, and that of Barbara in particular, and worked herself into such a temper that Barbara's servant began to regret having said anything at all. And from that day the sergeant had the old woman's eyes upon him. She noted his moodiness, his depression,
the growing shortness of his temper. The latter failing only drew from her daintier dishes than the sergeant had ever before enjoyed at his housekeeper's hands. But the sergeant was not to be comforted in this way. It would have been some comfort to him if the State school had been swept away by the floods, and he had had the rescuing of Barbara. It would have been an inexpressible consolation to the sergeant to have got at Jack Lovatt in some lonely place and torn him to pieces: he would have gone exultant to the gallows after that. But the floods did no important damage at Timber Town; and the scoundrel Lovatt was, no doubt, safe in England, though no one knew for certain; and nothing short of the heroic or the outrageous could have afforded the smallest satisfaction to Sergeant Seth now.

The sergeant saw Barbara often enough, but seldom said much to her, and, when he did, never mentioned Lovatt's name—that is, never after Lovatt ceased writing; and he only wrote once on the voyage—never afterwards. But one day, when the floods were over, the sergeant came across her suddenly, and she asked him without preamble:

“Do you think he is dead?”

“No, I don't,” said Seth bluntly.

“Your reason—?”

“I am having the English papers searched, week by week, in Melbourne.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “How good you are! Will you keep on having them searched, please? And will you tell me the moment you hear anything?”

“I will.”

“
Anything
, mind!”

“I promise.”

The weeks went on—without one word.

Barbara began to live it down. Her expression became sweet, and sad, and gentle—but brave. Had you seen her now you never could have believed that this frail, meek woman had delighted but lately in cruel coquetry; and, indeed, the coquette was dead. The cross schoolmistress was dead, too. The scholars took home glowing accounts of the new Barbara: she never scolded them now; on the contrary, she was making school a far less odious thing than it had ever been before; she had even taken to reading story-books aloud, after lessons, to those who liked to stay. But one day one little boy went home with a sad tale, and cried in telling it. It was a Sunday afternoon; he had been out nesting, and, in striking down to the road, had chanced to cross Lovatt's clearing; and there, seated upon an old, moss-covered, felled tree, he had found Miss Lyon, weeping as though her heart would break. She had called him to her, and kissed him,
and made him promise not to tell a soul. But he couldn't help telling his mother, and his mother chanced to be the kind soul who had been the first to send the eggs and things; she sent spring flowers the very next day; and promised her boy a thrashing and a half if he told another soul what he had told her.

That was in September. A week or two later Seth made a delightful discovery: Barbara had taken once more to practising the harmonium in the little church. She had never given up playing it at service, but she had given up practising, which would have been plain enough to a more musical audience. Of old she had practised very often indeed, for love of it. Many a time, during his first weeks at Timber Town, Seth had sat in his verandah and sadly listened to the sweet strains stealing across the broad, quiet road. He heard those strains, for the first time after an interval of months, one evening as he rode home from a neighbouring township. He cantered across to the church, and sat outside in his saddle until the music ceased and Barbara came out. Then Seth dismounted, and crossed the road by Barbara's side, leading his horse. Barbara seemed cheerful, and Seth, who was never mirth-provoking, combed out his wits to amuse her, and to hear her sweet laughter once more. He almost succeeded: Barbara did smile; but before they separated
her face changed, and sad eyes asked a question that was never spoken now.

Seth shook his head. There was no news yet. Barbara drooped, and went into her house with heavy steps.

And the very next day the news came.

The people in Melbourne who were searching the English papers for Whitty sent him a London evening paper with the following small paragraph framed in red ink:

“
A marriage has been arranged to take place early next year between Mr. John A. Lovatt, of Darley Hall, near Norwich, and Castle Auchen, N.B., and Laura, daughter of Major-General Ralph Eliot, R.H.A
”

Seth read it in his verandah while the bell was ringing for afternoon school, and the school-children were straggling past. The news must have had some visible effect upon him, of which he was unconscious, for the children turned round and stared at him. Of this he did become conscious, and turned hastily into the house. But the paper had slipped from his fingers the moment the marked paragraph was read; the wind caught it (it was the first hot-wind day of that spring), and, as chance had it, the paper was whisked out of the verandah and fell at the feet of the most incorrigible little boy in the school. This small savage appropriated the paper, folded it small, and carried it
into school for surreptitious perusal, while the sergeant played the caged tiger up and down the long-suffering carpet of his room.

The news had come at last, and it was no worse than Seth had anticipated; indeed, he had looked with confidence to receiving sooner or later the announcement of Lovatt's marriage. He knew all about Laura Eliot, you see; and five years ago he had told Lovatt—from what Lovatt told
him
—that he shouldn't be surprised if that engagement with the curate never came to anything. Nor did Whitty think any worse of Lovatt because of this news than he had already thought of him for his heartless behaviour; that, indeed, would have been impossible. What troubled the sergeant now had no reference to Lovatt; it had all to do with Barbara. The news had come; the news must be broken. It was the second time Seth had been compelled to break a blow to Barbara, but then last time Barbara had been a very different woman, one infinitely better able to bear bad tidings. He was seriously considering what use, if any, the motherly Waters might be to him in the present case, and whether the risk of ill consequences was sufficient to justify his taking a third party into Barbara's affairs, when, in a blank moment, he missed the paper.

He hastened back into the verandah; but the paper was not there. He ran out into the road; not a sign
of it was to be seen. It had been blown away, then, but how far? Where to? Just then Seth would have given his earthly possessions to have prevented that paper, with its flaming red-inked paragraph, from falling into other hands.

As he stood irresolute, and in despair, there was a sound of commotion in the schoolhouse hard by; the school poured out pell-mell; Seth was surrounded by white, frightened faces.

“Sergeant, make haste!” shrill voices screamed in his ears. “Teacher's dead!”

Seth scattered them right and left, and was in the schoolroom in a twinkling. At the same moment Annie, the maid, burst in by another door.

The benches were empty—not a child had remained; and, on the raised platform at the end of the room, Barbara lay lifeless. Seth ran across the desks, sprang upon the platform, and knelt beside her. Annie stood shrieking at the door, until the sergeant looked up and reviled her.

“You idiot! She has only fainted. Fetch Mrs. Waters.” And he lowered her head gently upon the boards, so that it should lie no higher than the rest of her, and fanned her face with both hands.

The young woman returned with the old one.

“She is coming to,” said the sergeant quietly, still
kneeling and fanning. “Which is her room? Lead the way, one of you.”

He lifted her tenderly in his arms, and followed Annie. A moment later he had laid poor Barbara on her own cool little bed, and left her to the women; but he had seen her eyes half open, and breath parting her pale lips: life was coming back.

On his way through the schoolroom he picked up what he had noticed the moment he saw Barbara lying senseless—his missing paper.

The whole school, to a child, were huddled together at the gate, with white expectant faces. Their uniform expression changed when they saw the sergeant. There was a look in his eyes that frightened them; besides, he was the police-sergeant. Not one of them dared to run. Seth shook the paper in their faces, and inquired—in the voice of an ogre—how it had come into Miss Lyon's hands. I regret to say that the Incorrigible was pushed forward with the utmost promptitude; and that the others, who all spoke at once, made unbecoming haste to explain how “teacher” had caught him reading the paper, confiscated it, put it on her own desk, and immediately—without a word—fallen flat upon the floor.

Seth looked more the ogre than ever, but held the culprit with his eye only.

“You stole the paper from my verandah—eh?”

“It b-b-blew out, sir!”

“Why didn't you blow it in again?”

No answer; tears; on the part of the others, preparations for fun—but not, most likely, for what took place. For the sergeant marched off that brat to the barracks, and clapped him into the prisoners' cell; and his school-fellows heard the bolts drawn with horrible clangs, and slunk away in terror. It was a sufficiently high-handed proceeding, no doubt; though the incarceration lasted only an hour; and though it was from this hour that the young savage's parents (who thanked Seth with tears in their eyes) afterwards came (one hopes not pre-maturely) to date his reformation.

But Barbara was lying like death upon her bed.

VII.

While Barbara Lyon lay senseless in the schoolroom at Timber Town, Australia, Jack Lovatt, in his bed at Castle Auchen, N.B., dreamed a disquieting dream. It must be remembered that, though the Australian time was between two and three in the afternoon, in Scotland it was about five o'clock in the early morning.

It was an emphatically bad dream. The Laird (Jack was the Laird at Auchen, and the Squire in Norfolk) came downstairs looking haggard and even haunted. This was the more annoying because the Laird's
fiancée
had arrived from London the previous evening. To add to the annoyance (though here one adds effect to cause), he shot execrably all day, and caught the gillies smiling. Up on the moors that day they had a champagne luncheon (planned overnight), the ladies joining the shooters; but Jack was not Jack at all. His mother and sister, and some others of the party (mostly a family party), studied Laura's manner towards him for an explanation; but her manner was all that they, in Jack's place, could have desired. In point of fact, Laura was as deeply mystified as they were, and her grievance was infinitely greater.

That evening Laura's grievance became really grave; for after dinner she took her banjo and gently fingered it on the gray shingly drive; but Jack never strolled out with his cigarette, as he had done the previous evening—as she quite thought he would do every evening; yet he must have heard. Laura stole at last to the billiard-room window; and Jack was there, playing pool with the other men. He played pool with the horrid men until long after she had gone to bed and cried herself to sleep. Then at last Jack crept up to bed himself, but never slept a wink; billiards and brandy-and-soda had done simply nothing for him.