CHAPTER VII
“THE FALLING OUT OF FAITHFUL FRIENDS”
THE Kid stamped loudly up the piazza steps, and trotted through the house to find Barbara. His infant intellect, assisted by the pangs of his stomach, assured him that it was past the dinner-hour. And yet no loud-tongued bell, energetically operated upon by the Duchess, had summoned him from his play in the dusty street. On such a dire occasion the Kid always reported to headquarters; and passing through the empty dining-room, he came upon Barbara alone in the kitchen, desperately struggling with a can of salmon. The Kid stopped on the threshold and stared.
Barbara, with the can in one hand and the opener in the other, was hotly endeavoring to effect a combination of the two, with a notable lack of success. At first she held the can in the air, and attempted to punch a hole in it with the can-opener; but as this seemed an entirely futile course, she gave it up, and adopted a new method of attack. When Charles arrived upon the scene of action, she placed the can firmly on the table, and gave it a vicious stab with her knife. The tin yielded; Barbara smiled, and all was proceeding merrily, when a sudden, inexplicable twist jerked can and can-opener out of her hand and landed them both on the floor. Barbara forgot herself, and stamped her foot forcibly.
“Where’s Mrs. Harris?” inquired the Kid, with a look of fearful anticipation gathering in his eyes.
No reply. His sister picked up the can, and succeeded in boring a small hole in its top.
“Say, where’s Mrs. Harris?” repeated the little boy, anxiously.
“Charles,” said Barbara, looking at the child for the first time,—“mercy, how dirty you are!—Charles, dinner will be ready soon. Mrs. Harris has left us—”
She stopped short in astonishment. The Kid had thrown himself prone upon the floor, and had broken into loud wails.
“What is it? What is it?” she cried, running to him and trying to pull him up from the floor.
The Kid held his tough little body down, and wept copiously.
Barbara tried sternness. “Charles, get up this minute,” she commanded, “and tell me what is the matter.”
The Kid lifted a woe-begone face to his sister.
“She’s gone,” he said, “and we can’t ever have any more beefsteak, or lamb with gravy.”
“Was that what you were crying for?” asked Barbara, coldly. “Charles, I am disgusted with you. Now you get up and wash your hands, and dinner will soon be ready.”
She sighed as she carried in the salmon, extracted from the hole in the can in minute sections, so that it resembled a pile of sawdust rather than the body of a fish. She found herself wishing that it had been possible to reconcile her desires and Mrs. Harris’s commands.
It was a melancholy family that partook of the pulverized fish, fried potatoes, bread, butter, and bananas, which constituted Barbara’s effort.
“Oh dear!” sighed Jack, as he took his seat. “Variety is the spice of life; we certainly have that, so I suppose you think we don’t care for the other spices, having left the pepper-cellar in the pantry. I always did like pepper on fried potatoes.”
David lifted his large blue eyes and let them rest on his elder sister.
“You must be like Cinderella’s sisters,” he said reflectively. “Had such an awful temper,—couldn’t anybody live with ’em.”
Barbara looked angrily at the little boy, but his face was so innocent that her heart softened. She did not answer him, but began to explain matters to her father, who looked grave and rather preoccupied. Her story did not seem to impress him, for some reason, and Barbara found herself faltering over her account, and justifying herself in every other sentence.
“Yes—yes,” said the Doctor, abstractedly, as she finished. “Of course you ought not to have to put up tomatoes if you don’t want to. Mrs. Harris was a very capable woman, though, and you are in for another siege, I’m afraid. It’s too bad. You will have to try to get some one else.” And, looking at his watch, he left the table.
Gassy had been quiet during the whole meal, her elfish locks, bright eyes, and silence making her more conspicuous than if she had shouted. After dinner, she soberly enveloped herself in her large apron, and took her place at Barbara’s side, ready to help her sister.
“I hate dishes,” she remarked conversationally, as she took the first plate in hand. “They are never over, and they never change. I must have wiped this Robinson Crusoe plate of the Kid’s at least a million times since mama went—There! Oh my, Barbara, I’ve broken it!”
“Cecilia! Why don’t you hold on to the things you take in your hands?” cried Barbara. “I never saw such a child! You break everything you touch!”
The child’s face flushed. She stood quietly a moment, and wiped two plates with deftness and precision. The next moment, Barbara at the sink suddenly felt as if a whirlwind had struck the room. A dishcloth went whizzing upwards until it clung to the clock on the shelf, a wriggling figure freed itself from a blue-checked apron, which was flung tumultuously on the floor, and an agitated, retreating voice exclaimed, “I’ll never—never—NEVER wipe for you again! There!”
Barbara finished the work alone, and went to the porch, with a struggle going on in her mind. She felt that she was failing, in spite of her best efforts,—failing with the children, failing to do the “simple” household tasks, and to manage the household machinery that had never been so startlingly in evidence before. What was the cause of it all?
“Of course I am not very experienced,” Barbara said to herself, “but still, with a moderately good servant, I am sure I could manage very well. The trouble has been with the frightful maids we have had. And the children are demoralized by the frequent changes, and are hard to control. Oh, for one good cook, so that I could show myself to be the capable girl that a college girl ought to be!”
She felt so cheered by her soliloquy, which she did not realize to be unconscious self-justification, that she sat down almost happily to write the daily report that went to brighten her mother’s exile. In spite of all domestic accidents and crises, this letter was always written; and the more lugubrious Barbara’s state of mind, the harder she strove for a merry report. She had nearly finished the last sheet, with flying fingers, when a chuckle caused her to look up, and discover that Jack had been reading page after page, as she had discarded it.
“Bab,” he said, “you certainly do write the funniest letters I ever read. If you should try to write a story instead of ‘The Absolute In-ness of the Internal Entity,’ you would make your fortune immediately. I don’t see how you can write one way and feel another, as you do.”
Barbara’s reply was checked by the appearance of Susan, and Jack disappeared, carrying the letter with him.
“I’m so glad to see you!” said Barbara, cordially. “Did you bring your Browning with you?”
“Yes,” answered Susan, sitting down in the big cane rocker. “Yes, I brought him, and a basket of mending besides. I am awfully behind in it, and I can talk and darn at the same time.”
The glad light faded out of Barbara’s eyes. “Why, Sue dear!” she said, “that’s impossible. No one could possibly study Browning and do anything else at the same time. He absorbs all the energy and attention that one has.”
“Oh dear!” sighed Susan. “I did want to begin our lessons to-day, but we’ll have to put it off till to-morrow, then. Bob leaves for New York to-night, you know, and he must have all the socks that I can muster.”
“Are you really going to mend those things now, instead of reading the ‘Ring’ with me?”
Susan looked up quickly. “Why, what else can I do?” she said. “Bob must have decent clothes, and we can begin the ‘Ring’ to-morrow.”
“Very well,” responded Barbara, icily. “Of course Browning doesn’t mean so much to you as he does to me. But I considered our engagement to read this afternoon so binding that I have just lost Mrs. Harris in consequence.”
“Lost Mrs. Harris in consequence?” repeated Susan. “Why, Barbara, how?”
“She insisted upon putting up tomatoes this afternoon when I couldn’t help her, because of our engagement, and—well, she wouldn’t stay when I was firm,” replied Barbara, wishing that the subject of disagreement had been a little more dignified. “Really, Susan, that woman was insufferable.”
“And you let her go for that?” cried Susan, in a surprised voice.
“Yes,” answered Barbara.
Susan jabbed her big needle into a large sock, with energy. Her friend watched her with uninterested gaze. Suddenly Susan stopped, and looked at Barbara with an expression of determination.
“Babbie,” she said with an air of having summoned up her courage,—“Babbie, I hope you won’t think me officious, but I feel that I must tell you some things. Even if I am not a college girl, I have learned a good deal about common things in these four quiet years at home. You are having a hard time, my dear, as everybody knows. Of course every one talks about it. But I don’t know what people will say when they find out why Mrs. Harris left,—for of course they will find out.”
Susan stopped her incoherent outburst, and eyed Barbara doubtfully. Then she went on.
“It was dreadful of you to let Mrs. Harris go, when she had been so kind. What if she did go contrary to your ideas! Some of them are queer, you know, and why did you care, anyway, so long as your poor family were taken care of comfortably? You can’t get along without a maid, Barbara,—it’s all too much for you. But I’m afraid you’ll find it hard to get any one to come, now.”
Susan stopped uncertainly.
“Do finish,” said a cold voice from the hammock.
Susan looked at the motionless figure lying in an attitude of superior attentiveness, and her color rose.
“Barbara, I can’t let it go on,” she broke out. “If no one suffered but yourself, it would be different But the children are affected, too. David never looked so really ill as he does now; and if you are not careful, you will find him sick on your hands. Your father is worn and worried all the time, and you yourself are as thin as a rail. It’s because you don’t accommodate yourself to circumstances. You insist upon carrying out some absurd theoretical ideas in the face of practical difficulties. And I hate to have people talk about you as they do.”
As these last words fell upon her ears, Barbara sprang up from the hammock. Her eyes were flashing, and her dignity had utterly disappeared.
“Don’t ever say that to me again!” she cried excitedly. “I don’t care a continental what people say about me! Just because I have been away all these years and have had superior advantages, all the people of Auburn discuss me and criticise me, and are—well, jealous!”
“Do you mean that I am jealous?” asked Susan, an unusual light in her soft blue eyes.
“That makes no difference,” retorted Barbara. “The truth of the matter is, that you have stayed here, and have had some experience in housekeeping, and you have grown to think that it is so important that nothing else is of value to you—none of the higher things. If that is what you and Auburn mean,—that I care more for,—yes, Browning, and literature, and the real issues of life, than for housekeeping,—then you are quite right I do. And I always shall. And I must say that I resent any interference whatever.”
There was a long silence. Then Susan rose, biting her lips, to hide their trembling. “I must go,” she said.
“Can’t you stay longer?” asked Barbara, politely.
“No, I’m afraid not,” replied Susan.
To both girls, the very air was full of constraint. Barbara accompanied her visitor to the gate, where they parted with scarcely a word. Then she turned back swiftly to the porch, and sat down in the chair just vacated by Susan. She pressed her hand to her temples.
“I must think this out,” she said aloud. “Could I have been wrong?”
Some time later, the Kid cantered up to the porch. He went straight to a bowed figure in the big chair, and pulled down the hands from the hidden face.
“I’m hungry, Barb’ra,” he said. “Isn’t supper ready?”
Barbara put her arms around him, and hugged him tightly.
“You like me, little brother, don’t you?” she said.
“Of course,” answered the Kid, nonchalantly; “and I’m hungry.”
Barbara took him by the hand, and led him gently into the house.
“I think I can find something for hungry little boys,” she said.