H. Rider Haggard

“ Barbara made light of Anthony’s dream, which seemed to her to be after all but a reflection or an echo of earthly things tricked out with some bizarre imagination. Was not this obvious? The house, a vague replica of his own house. The river, something copied from the Nile, delta and all. The waterfalls, Niagara on a larger scale. The great trees, doubtless their counterparts grew in America. The brother and the babe, would he not naturally be thinking of his brother and his babe? ”

“ Anthony, seeing that Barbara had never heard the story and its ending, did not tell it to her, but she read something of what was passing in his mind, as very often she had the power to do.
“Dearest,” she said earnestly, “I know what you think. You think that such happiness as ours will not be allowed to last for long; that something evil will overtake us. ”

“ Still, watched, fought against by Barbara, its progress was slow. The winter months they spent in warmer climates, only residing in Eastwich from May to November. During the summer Anthony occupied himself on matters connected with the estate and principally with the cultivation of the home farm. Indeed, as time went on and increasing weakness forced him to withdraw himself more and more from the world and its affairs, the interests of this farm loomed ever larger in his eyes, as largely indeed as though he depended upon it alone for his daily bread. ”

“ Once he said as much to Barbara, who thought a while and answered him: “Why should we be taken beyond all such things? It seems scarcely reasonable. I know we have not much to go on, but did not the Christ speak of drinking the fruit of the vine new with you in my Father’s kingdom?” Therefore surely there must be a growing plant that produces the fruit and a process directed by intelligence which turns it into wine. There must be husbandmen or farmers. There must be mansions or abiding-places also, for they are spoken of, and flowers and all things that are beautiful and useful ”

“ These grave and learned men told him outright that his lungs were seriously attacked, and that he must choose between following their advice and a speedy departure from the world.
Anthony would have defied them, for that was his nature. He wished to go on with his work and take the risk. But Barbara persuaded him to obedience. She said she agreed with him that the matter of his health was greatly exaggerated. ”

“ Towards the end Anthony grew worse with dreadful swiftness. He was to have gone abroad as usual that winter, but when the time came his state was such that the doctors shrugged their shoulders and said that he might as well stop at home in comfort. ”

“ Putting aside sport and its pleasures, which he had abandoned because of the suffering and extinction entailed upon the shot or hunted creatures, to him it seemed inexpressibly sad that even his honest farming operations, at least where the beasts were concerned, should always culminate in death. ”

“ Already he had been entrusted with a few cases which he held as “devil” for somebody else, when two events happened which between them brought his career as a lawyer to an end. In the November after the death of their baby, his father suddenly died. On receiving the news of his fatal illness Anthony hurried to Eastwich without even returing home to fetch a warm overcoat, and as a result took a severe cold. During the winter following the funeral this cold settled on his lungs. ”