WHERE THEY WITHERED.

Barbara did not enjoy the party at the Cloberrys. She was dull and abstracted. It was otherwise with Eve. During the drive she had sulked; she was in a pet with Barbara, who was a stupid, tiresome marplot. But when she arrived at Bradstone and was surrounded by admirers, when she had difficulty, not in getting partners, but in selecting among those who pressed themselves on her, Eve’s spirits were elated. She forgot about Jasper, Barbara, her father, about everything but present delight. With sparkling eyes, heightened colour, and dimples that came and went in her smiling face, she sailed past Barbara without observing her, engrossed in the pleasure of the dance, and in playing with her partner.

Barbara was content to be unnoticed. She sat by herself in a corner, scarce noticing what went on, so wrapped up was she in her thoughts. Her mood was observed by her hostess, and attributed to anxiety for her father. Mrs. Cloberry went to her, seated herself at her side, and talked to her kindly about Mr. Jordan and his accident.

‘You have a friend staying with you. We rather expected him,’ said Mrs. Cloberry.

‘Oh!’ Barbara answered, ‘that was dear Eve’s nonsense. She is a child, and does not think. My father has engaged a steward; of course he could not come.’

‘How lovely Eve is!’ said Mrs. Cloberry. ‘I think I never saw so exquisite a creature.’

‘And she is as good and sweet as she is lovely,’ answered Barbara, always eager to sing her sister’s praises.

Eve’s roses were greatly admired. She had her posy out of her waistband showing the roses, and many a compliment was occasioned by them. ‘Barbara had a beautifull bouquet also,’ she said, and looked round. ‘Oh, Bab! where are your yellow roses?’

‘I have dropped them,’ answered Barbara.

Besides dancing there was singing. Eve required little pressing.

‘My dear Miss Jordan,’ said Mrs. Cloberry, ‘how your sister has improved in style. Who has been giving her lessons?’

The party was a pleasant one; it broke up early. It began at four o’clock and was over when the sun set. As the sisters drove home, Eve prattled as a brook over stones. She had perfectly enjoyed herself. She had outshone every girl present, had been much courted and greatly flattered. Eve was not a vain girl; she knew she was pretty, and accepted homage as her right. Her father and sister had ever been her slaves; and she expected to find everyone wear chains before her. But there was no vulgar conceit about her. A queen born to wear the crown grows up to expect reverence and devotion. It is her due. So with Eve; she had been a queen in Morwell since infancy.

Barbara listened to her talk and answered her in monosyllables, but her mind was not with the subject of Eve’s conversation. She was thinking then, and she had been thinking at Bradstone, whilst the floor throbbed with dancing feet, whilst singers were performing, of that bouquet of yellow roses which she had flung away. Was it still lying on the grass in the quadrangle? Had Jane, the housemaid, seen it, picked it up, and taken it to adorn the kitchen table?

She knew that Jasper must have taken a long walk to procure those two bunches of roses. She knew that he could ill afford the expense. When he was ill, she had put aside his little purse containing his private money, and had counted it, to make sure that none was lost or taken. She knew that he was poor. Out of the small sum he owned he must have paid a good deal for these roses.

She had thrown her bunch away in angry scorn, under his eyes. She had been greatly provoked; but—had she behaved in a ladylike and Christian spirit? She might have left her roses in a tumbler in the parlour or the hall. That would have been a courteous rebuff—but to fling them away!

There are as many conflicting currents in the human soul as in the ocean; some run from east to west, and some from north to south, some are sweet and some bitter, some hot and others cold. Only in the Sargasso Sea are there no currents—and that is a sea of weeds. What we believe to-day we reject to-morrow; we are resentful at one moment over a wrong inflicted, and are repentant the next for having been ourselves the wrong-doer. Barbara had been in fiery indignation at three o’clock against Jasper; by five she was cooler, and by six reproached herself.

As the sisters drove into the little quadrangle, Barbara turned her head aside, and whilst she made as though she were unwinding the knitted shawl that was wrapt about her head, she looked across the turf, and saw lying, where she had cast it, the bunch of roses.

The stable-boy came with his lantern to take the horse and carriage, and the sisters dismounted. Jane appeared at the hall door to divest them of their wraps.

‘How is papa?’ asked Eve; then, without waiting for an answer, she ran into her father’s room to kiss him and tell him of the party, and show herself again in her pretty dress, and again receive his words of praise and love.

But Barbara remained at the door, leisurely folding her cloak. Then she put both her own and her sister’s parasols together in the stand. Then she stood brushing her soles on the mat—quite unnecessarily, as they were not dirty.

‘You may go away, Jane,’ said Barbara to the maid, who lingered at the door.

‘Please, Miss, I’m waiting for you to come in, that I may lock up.’

Then Barbara was obliged to enter.

‘Has Mr. Babb been with my father?’ she asked.

‘No, Miss. I haven’t seen him since you left.’

‘You may go to bed, Jane. It is washing-day to-morrow, and you will have to be up at four. Has not Mr. Babb had his supper?’

‘No, Miss. He has not been here at all.’

‘That will do.’ She signed the maid to leave.

She stood in the hall, hesitating. Should she unbar the door and go out and recover the roses? Eve would leave her father’s room in a moment, and ask questions which it would be inconvenient to answer. Let them lie. She went upstairs with her sister, after having wished her father good-night.

‘Barbie, dear!’ said Eve, ‘did you observe Mr. Squash?’

‘Do not, Eve. That is not his name.’

‘I think he looked a little disconcerted. I repudiated.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I refused to be bound by the engagements we had made for a quadrille and a waltz. I did not want to dance with him, and I did not.’

‘Run back into your room, darling, and go to bed.’

When Barbara was alone she went to her window and opened it. The window looked into the court. If she leaned her head out far, she could see where the bunch of roses ought to be. But she could not see them, though she looked, for the grass lay dusk in the shadows. The moon was rising, and shone on the long roof like steel, and the light was creeping down the wall. That long roof was over the washhouse, and next morning at early dawn the maids would cross the quadrangle with the linen and carry fuel, and would either trample on or pick up and appropriate the bunch of yellow roses.

Barbara remembered every word that she had said to Jasper. She could not forget—and now could not forgive herself. Her words had been cruel; how they must have wounded him! He had not been seen since. Perhaps he was gone and would not return again. They and she would see him no more. That would be well in one way, it would relieve her of anxiety about Eve; but, on the other hand, Jasper had proved himself most useful, and, above all—he was repentant. Her treatment of him might make him desperate, and cause him to abandon his resolutions to amend. Barbara knelt at the window, and prayed.

The white owls were flying about the old house. They had their nests in the great barn. The bats were squeaking as they whisked across the quadrangle, hunting gnats.

When Barbara rose from her knees her eyes were moist. She stood on tiptoe and looked forth from the casement again. The moonlight had reached the sward, drawing a sharp line of light across it, broken by one brighter speck—the bunch of roses.

Then Barbara, without her shoes, stole downstairs. There was sufficient light in the hall for her to find her way across it to the main door. She very softly unbarred it, and still in her stockings, unshod, went out on the doorstep, over the gravel, the dewy grass, and picked up the cold wet bunch.

Then she slipped in again, refastened the door, and with beating heart regained her room.

Now that she had the roses, what should she do with them? She stood in the middle of her room near the candle, looking at them. They were not much faded. The sun had not reached them, and the cool grass had kept them fresh. They were very delicately formed, lovely roses, and freshly sweet. What should she do with them? If they were put in a tumbler they would flourish for a few days, and then the leaves would fall off, and leave a dead cluster of seedless rose-hearts.

Barbara had a desk that had belonged to her mother, and this desk had in it a secret drawer. In this drawer Barbara preserved a few special treasures; a miniature of her mother, a silver cold-cream capsule with the head of Queen Anne on it, that had belonged to her grandmother, the ring of brilliants and sapphire that had come to her from her aunt, and a lock of Eve’s hair when she was a baby. Barbara folded the roses in a sheet of white paper, wrote in pencil on it the date, and placed them in the secret drawer, there to wither along with the greatest treasures she possessed.

Barbara’s heart was no Sargasso Sea. In it ran currents strong and contrary. What she cast away with scorn in the afternoon, she sought and hid as a treasure in the night.