Part 32 (1/2)
There was no reply. Barbara was swelling and panting, and trying to keep her emotion down. Mr. Carlyle tried again,--
”Barbara, I asked you which day your papa cut his hay.”
Still no reply. Barbara was literally incapable of making one. The steam of excitement was on, nearly to its highest pitch. Her throat was working, the muscles of her mouth began to twitch, and a convulsive sob, or what sounded like it, broke from her. Mr. Carlyle turned his head hastily.
”Barbara! are you ill? What is it?”
On it came, pa.s.sion, temper, wrongs, and nervousness, all boiling over together. She shrieked, she sobbed, she was in strong hysterics. Mr.
Carlyle half-carried, half-dragged her to the second stile, and placed her against it, his arm supporting her; and an old cow and two calves, wondering what the disturbance could mean at that sober time of night, walked up and stared at them.
Barbara struggled with her emotion--struggled manfully--and the sobs and shrieks subsided; not the excitement or the pa.s.sion. She put away his arm, and stood with her back to the stile, leaning against it. Mr.
Carlyle felt inclined to fly to the pond for water, but he had nothing but his hat to get it in.
”Are you better, Barbara? What can have caused it?”
”What can have caused it?” she burst forth, giving full swing to the reins, and forgetting everything. ”You can ask me that?”
Mr. Carlyle was struck dumb; but by some inexplicable laws of sympathy, a dim and very unpleasant consciousness of the truth began to steal over him.
”I don't understand you, Barbara. If I have offended you in any way, I am truly sorry.”
”Truly sorry, no doubt!” was the retort, the sobs and the shrieks alarmingly near. ”What do you care for me? If I go under the sod to- morrow,” stamping it with her foot, ”you have your wife to care for; what am I?”
”Hus.h.!.+” he interposed, glancing round, more mindful for her than she was for herself.
”Hush, yes! You would like me to hush; what is my misery to you? I would rather be in my grave, Archibald Carlyle, than endure the life I have led since you married her. My pain is greater than I well know how to bear.”
”I cannot affect to misunderstand you,” he said, feeling more at a nonplus than he had felt for many a day, and heartily wis.h.i.+ng the whole female creation, save Isabel, somewhere. ”But my dear Barbara. I never gave you cause to think I--that I--cared for you more than I did.”
”Never gave me cause!” she gasped. ”When you have been coming to our house constantly, almost like my shadow; when you gave me this” das.h.i.+ng open her mantle, and holding up the locket to his view; ”when you have been more intimate with me than a brother.”
”Stay, Barbara. There it is--a brother. I have been nothing else; it never occurred to me to be anything else,” he added, in his straightforward truth.
”Ay, as a brother, nothing else!” and her voice rose once more with her excitement; it seemed that she would not long control it. ”What cared you for my feelings? What recked you that you gained my love?”
”Barbara, hus.h.!.+” he implored: ”do be calm and reasonable. If I ever gave you cause to think I regarded you with deeper feelings, I can only express to you my deep regret, my repentance, and a.s.sure you it was done unconsciously.”
She was growing calmer. The pa.s.sion was fading, leaving her face still and white. She lifted it toward Mr. Carlyle.
”You treated me ill in showing signs of love, if you felt it not. Why did you kiss me?”
”I kissed you as I might kiss a sister. Or perhaps as a pretty girl; man likes to do so. The close terms on which our families have lived, excused, if it did not justify, a degree of familiarity that might have been unseemly in--”
”You need not tell me that,” hotly interrupted Barbara. ”Had it been a stranger who had won my love and then thrown me from him, do you suppose I would have reproached him as I am now reproaching you? No; I would have died, rather than that he should have suspected it. If she had not come between us, should you have loved me?”
”Do not pursue this unthankful topic,” he besought, almost wis.h.i.+ng the staring cow would run away with her.
”I ask you, should you have loved me?” persisted Barbara, pa.s.sing her handkerchief over her ashy lips.
”I don't know. How can I know? Do I not say to you, Barbara, that I only thought of you as a friend, a sister? I cannot tell what might have been.”