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Barbara Ladd by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts
Barbara Ladd by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts
She knew very well that she should have started earlier; but if there was one thing that could daunt her wayward and daring little spirit, it was the dark. Now, as she stood, wide-eyed and breathless with suspense, beside her open window, the face of the dark began to change. A gray pallor came over it, and on a sudden she was aware of a black horizon line, ghostly, lonely beyond words, far to the eastward over the yet invisible tree-tops.
With this pallor came a chill which Barbara felt on her little, trembling hands, on her eyes, and in her heart: as if the night, in going, had laid aside its benignity and touched the world in farewell with a cold hand of warning and menace. Then, here and there a leaf stood out, palely distinct, upon the thick frondage of the apple-tree whose nearest branches crowded the roof of the porch below her window. There was a faint chirping from the heart of the syringa thicket; and Barbara's ears were so attentive that she caught the drowsy, awakening flutter of small wings down below in the dewy gloom. With the sound came a cool and delicate pungency from the wet currant bushes, puffed upward to her as if the garden world beneath the leaves had drawn a long breath in getting ready to awake. This tonic scent, which nostrils less keen than Barbara's would scarcely have discerned, came to the child as a signal for action. Peculiarly sensitive to the message and influence of odours, she felt this sudden fragrance in her nerves as a summons, a promise, and a challenge, all in one. Noiselessly she pushed the two diamond-paned leaves of her window open to their widest. How the grayness was spreading! A pang of apprehension seized her, lest she had delayed too long. She turned impulsively, and stepped into the darkness of her room.
In a moment her slim little figure reappeared at the window, this time heavily encumbered. In one hand was a round, soft bundle, in the other a square wicker basket with a white cloth tied over the top. The white cloth glimmered conspicuously, but the light was not yet strong enough to reveal the colour of the bundle. Setting both the burdens out upon the roof of the porch, she turned, glanced in at the window, and said, softly:
"Good-bye, little room! I haven't been happy with you. But I hope you won't be lonely when I'm gone!"
Leaning over the edge of the porch, she dropped the bundle soundlessly into a bed of marigolds. The basket, on the other hand, she took up with care. Thrusting her left arm through the handle, she swung herself nimbly into the apple-tree, and thence to the ground; while the basket tipped and slewed as if it were alive.
"Be still, my babies!" she whispered; and then, picking up the bundle from the crushed marigolds, and never turning her head to look up at the stately old house which she was leaving, she fled down the walk between the currant and gooseberry bushes, the thyme, the sage, and summer savoury beds,-through a narrow wicket gate half-hidden in larkspur and honeysuckle,-along the foot-path through the rank and dripping burdocks back of the barn, where she felt a little qualm of homesickness at the sound of her dear horses breathing deeply and contentedly in the stalls,-and thence, letting down one of the bars and crawling through with her burdens, out into the graying, hillocky open of the cow-pasture.
By this time a cool and luminous wave of pink, changing to pale saffron at its northeastern edges, had crept up over the far-off hilltops. Faint tinges of colour, of a strange and unusual transparency, began to reveal themselves all over the expanse of pasture. As the miracle of dawn thus overtook her, a sense of unreality came upon Barbara's soul. She felt as if this were not she, this little girl so adventurously running away-but rather some impossible child in a story-book, who had so engaged her sympathies for the moment that she could not be sure which was make-believe and which herself. With a chill of lonesome dread she slipped a hand under the cloth and into the basket. The touch of warm, live, cuddling fur reassured her, and brought her back to her own identity. But stranger and stranger grew the mystical transparency, only made the more startling by a fleece of vapour here and there curling up from between the hillocks. Stumps, weed-tops, patches of juniper, tufts of blueberry bush, wisps of coarse grass left uncropped, seemed to detach themselves, lift, and float in the solvent clarity of that new-born air, that new-born light. Surely, this was not her old, familiar world! Barbara stood still, her great eyes dilating, her lips parted in a kind of ecstasy, as sense and spirit alike drank in the marvel of the dawn. It seemed to her as if she discovered, in that moment, that the world was made anew with every morning,-and with the discovery she became aware, dimly but securely, that she was herself a part of the imperishable, ever-renewing life.
She was brought back to more instant considerations by the sudden appearance of a red-and-white cow, which got up with a great, windy, grunting breath, and came toward her out of a misty hollow. With all the cows of the herd Barbara was in high favour, but just now the sight alarmed her.
"Gracious!" she exclaimed to herself, "Abby will be out to milk in another minute!"-and she broke into a run at the best speed that her burdens would permit, making for the maple woods which lay to the north of the pasture. The cow looked and mooed after her wistfully, wondering at her flight, and aching for the relief of the milker's hand. But Barbara paid no heed to her, nor to the others of the herd, who now came into view from corners of the pasture as the enchanted light grew and spread. She darted on, vanishing in the hollows, flitting over the hillocks, fleetly threading the crooked and slender path,-a wisp-like, dark little figure. Her bundle, now seen to be tied up in a silk shawl of flamelike scarlet, and the snow-white covering of her basket, flickered across the mystical transparency of the landscape like bubbles of intense light blown far in advance of the morning.
Not till she came to the other side of the pasture and plunged into the obscurity of the woods did Barbara check her speed. Here the dawn was but beginning to penetrate, thrusting thin shafts of pink-amber light here and there through the leafage, and touching the eastward sides of trunk and branch with elusive glories. Breathing quickly, Barbara set down the bundle and the precious basket; but she snatched them up again as she caught a sound of panting and running behind her. On the instant, however, the alarm faded from her face.
"Down, Keep!" she commanded, sharply, as the gaunt gray form of a mastiff leaped upon her, almost carrying her off her feet. Fawning, and giving little yelps of joy, the huge animal crouched before her, pounding the sward with ecstatic tail, and implored to lick her hands. She threw both arms about the dog's head, murmuring to him, poignantly impetuous, her voice tearful with self-reproach:
"Was his best friend going away, without ever saying good-bye to him? Well, she was bad, she was very, very bad!" And she wiped away several large, surreptitious tears upon the furry folds of his neck. Then she sprang up and renewed her journey resolutely; while the mastiff, bounding in front of her, showed his plain conviction that some fine, audacious adventure was afoot, and that it would be his great luck to have a part in it.
For more than a mile Barbara followed the wood-path, the fresh, wet gloom lightening about her as she went. Where the maples thinned away, and the slenderer ash and birch took their place, she got glimpses of a pale sky overhead, dappled with streamers of a fiery violet. Here and there a dripping leaf had caught the colours from above and flashed elusive jewels upon her vision. Here and there the dewy thickets of witch-hazel and viburnum crowded so close about the path that her skirts and shoulders were drenched with their scented largess. Here and there in her path rose suddenly a cluster of night-born toadstools-squat, yellow, and fat-fleshed, or tall, shadowy-hooded, and whitely venomous-over which she stepped with wary aversion. And once, eager as was her haste, she stopped to pick a great, lucent, yellow orchid, which seemed to beam like a sacred lamp in its dark green shrine beneath the alders.
At length the path dipped sharply between rocks overgrown with poison ivy. Then the trees thinned away before her, and the day grew at once full of light; and the mirror-surface of a little lake, shining with palest crocus-tint and violet and silvery rose, obscured with patches of dissolving mist, flashed upon her eyes. She ran down to the very edge, where the water seemed to breathe among its fringing pebbles, and there set down the bundle and the basket; while the dog, yelping joyously, bounded and splashed in the shallows.
When, however, Barbara stepped up the bank to a thicket of Indian willow, and proceeded, by dint of carefully calculated lifting and pulling, to drag forth from its hiding-place a ruddy canoe of birch-bark, the dog's spirits and his flaunting tail fell together. If Barbara's venture was to be in the canoe, he knew he should have no part in it; and his big, doggish heart was dejected. With his tongue hanging from his jaws, he sat up on his brindled haunches and looked on, while slowly and laboriously Barbara worked the frail craft down to the water. When it was afloat, and the resined prow pulled up into a tuft of weeds to keep it from drifting away, Barbara fetched two paddles from the same hiding-place. In the bow of the canoe she stowed her bundle and her basket. In the stern she arranged a pile of ferns as a cushion for her knees. Once more she flung her arms around Keep's massive neck, kissed his silky ears, wept violently for the smallest fraction of a minute; and then, stepping into the canoe with the light precision of one skilled with the birch-bark, she pushed off, and with quick, vigorous strokes headed straight across the lake. The dog ran uneasily up and down the water's edge, whining and fretting after her. When she was a little way out he made a sudden resolution, plunged into the water, and swam eagerly after the fugitive. But Barbara heard the splash, and understood. She realised that he would surely upset the canoe in trying to get into it, and this was the time when she must seem hard, however her heart was melting. She looked back over her shoulder.
"Go home, Keep! Go home!" she commanded.
The dog turned obediently and made for shore. And Barbara, her lips set and the big tears rolling down her cheeks, continued her journey out across the lake.
Canada in Flanders, Volume III by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts
“Revenant à la Belle Acadie”—the words sang themselves over and over in my brain, but I could get no further than that one line, try as I might. I felt that it was the beginning of a song which, if only I could imprison it in my rhyme, would stick in the hearts of our men of Acadie, and live upon their lips, and be sung at every camp and hearth fire, as “à la Claire Fontaine” is sung by the voyageurs of the St. Lawrence. At last I perceived, however, that the poem was living itself out at that moment in my heart, and did not then need the half-futile expression that words at best can give.
There was only one man in Raegan's heart, and it was Mitchel. In the second year of her marriage to him, she got pregnant. Raegan's joy knew no bounds. But before she could break the news to her husband, he served her divorce papers because he wanted to marry his first love. After an accident, Raegan lay in the pool of her own blood and called out to Mitchel for help. Unfortunately, he left with his first love in his arms. Raegan escaped death by the whiskers. Afterward, she decided to get her life back on track. Her name was everywhere years later. Mitchel became very uncomfortable. For some reason, he began to miss her. His heart ached when he saw her all smiles with another man. He crashed her wedding and fell to his knees while she was at the altar. With bloodshot eyes, he queried, "I thought you said your love for me is unbreakable? How come you are getting married to someone else? Come back to me!"
He saved her. He was her fated mate. Her king and her protector. Until a single ritual shattered everything. Now she's a Lycan queen with no memory of loving him... And all she feels is hatred. Will his obsession bring her back... or destroy them both?
In her past life, she trusted the wrong people-and betrayed the one man who loved her most. Blinded by lies, she pushed her fiancé into ruin. Yet even as the world turned against him, he forgave her. And in the end, he slaughtered all her enemies, before using the final blade to follow her into death. Now reborn, she swears to rewrite her fate. This time, she tears apart the fake innocents, crushes the traitors, and rises in brilliance-only for one purpose: to win back the heart of the man she once destroyed. But little does she know. He never truly left. From the shadows, he has already laid his trap, created a world where she can only fall-back into his arms. A love once buried in blood and regret will now reignite amidst vengeance, redemption, and fate's cruel game.
For three years, Cathryn and her husband Liam lived in a sexless marriage. She believed Liam buried himself in work for their future. But on the day her mother died, she learned the truth: he had been cheating with her stepsister since their wedding night. She dropped every hope and filed for divorce. Sneers followed-she'd crawl back, they said. Instead, they saw Liam on his knees in the rain. When a reporter asked about a reunion, she shrugged. "He has no self-respect, just clings to people who don't love him." A powerful tycoon wrapped an arm around her. "Anyone coveting my wife answers to me."
Kaelyn devoted three years tending to her husband after a terrible accident. But once he was fully recovered, he cast her aside and brought his first love back from abroad. Devastated, Kaelyn decided on a divorce as people mocked her for being discarded. She went on to reinvent herself, becoming a highly sought-after doctor, a champion racer, and an internationally renowned architectural designer. Even then, the traitors sneered in disdain, believing Kaelyn would never find someone. But then the ex-husband’s uncle, a powerful warlord, returned with his army to ask for Kaelyn’s hand in marriage.
Life was a bed of roses for Debra, the daughter of Alpha. That was until she had a one-night stand with Caleb. She was sure he was her mate as determined by Moon Goddess. But this hateful man refused to accept her. Weeks passed before Debra discovered that she was pregnant. Her pregnancy brought shame to her and everyone she loved. Not only was she driven out, but her father was also hunted down by usurpers. Fortunately, she survived with the help of the mysterious Thorn Edge Pack. Five years passed and Debra didn't hear anything from Caleb. One day, their paths crossed again. They were both on the same mission—carrying out secret investigations in the dangerous Roz Town for the safety and posterity of their respective packs. Caleb was still cold toward her. But as time went on, he fell head over heels in love with her. He tried to make up for abandoning her, but Debra wasn't having any of it. She was hell-bent on hiding her daughter from him and also making a clean break. What did the future hold for the two as they journeyed in Roz Town? What kind of secrets would they find? Would Caleb win Debra's heart and get to know his lovely daughter? Find out!
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