Alexander Barclay

“ This year deceased Alexander Parker, sometimes mentioned in this history, being a man not only of a godly life and conversation, but also of a godly mien and grave deportment. In the following year, viz. that of 1690, Robert Barclay also departed this life, a man of eminent gifts and great endowments, expert not only in the languages of the learned, but also well versed in the writings of the ancient fathers, and other ecclesiastical writers, and furnished with a great understanding, being not only of a sound judgment, but also strong in arguments, and cheerful in sufferings. ”

“ Barclay notices (Inner Life, p. 11) that, with all its freedom, the society from the first was not ‘independent’ but ‘connexional’ in its character. There is shrewdness in Baxter's remark that the quakers were ‘the ranters revers'd,’ turned from wild extravagances to ‘extream austerity’ (Calamy, Abridgement, 1713, p. 102) . Baxter ascribes the change to Penn. But the ranter spirit reached its climax and its fall in the Bristol ride (1656) of James Nayler [q. v.] , who died in 1660, many years before the adhesion of either Robert Barclay (1667) or William Penn (1668) . ”

“ Yonder that deep gash in the sod at the left hides a woman's face—pale, wasted, dead on her pillow; and that clean black streak on the ebony cane—that is a tear, and in the tear is a girl's face and back of hers shimmers a boy's countenance. All of John Barclay's life and hopes and dreams and visions are spread out before him on the ground. So he closes his eyes, and braces his soul, and then, having risen, whistles as he limps lightly—for a man past fifty—down to the boat. ”

“ And this is strange, too, considering how rich and powerful John Barclay is and how by the scratch of his pen, he might set men working by the thousands for some righteous cause. Yet so it is; for with all the consciousness of great power, with all the feeling of unrestraint that such power gives a man, driving him to think he is a kind of god, John Barclay was only a two-legged man, with a limp in one foot, and a little mad place in his brain, wherein he kept the sense of his relation to the rest of this universe. ”

“ However Barclay urges and pleads with her, her reply still is "I must go by my light." "I cannot submit to the opinions or practice of others, though they have more light than myself." [24]
[24] Not that Barclay aimed at proselytising, but he wished her to take the course which seemed to him the necessary outcome of her views. "I pretend to be no sect master," he writes, "and disgust all such."
At Herford, Barclay left his friends and returned to Amsterdam. In September we find him in London, using his influence with the Duke of York to procure liberty for Friends in Scotland. ”

“ To the house of Stuart, Barclay was ever fondly attached. His father had suffered in the civil wars; and the doctrines of non-resistance and passive obedience, avowed by the Quakers, were favourable to the Stuart dynasty. The last visit which Barclay paid to London was rendered memorable by the abdication of James the Second. As he was standing beside that monarch, near a window, the King looked out, and remarked that "the wind was fair for the Prince of Orange to come over." "It is hard," replied Barclay, "that no expedient can be found to satisfy the people." ”

“ A red bird was calling in the woods near by, and the soft south wind had spring in it as it blew across the veil of waters that hid the dam. John Barclay's head was full of music, and he was lounging across the bridge from the mill on his way home to try his new pipe organ. He had spent four hours the day before at his organ bench, [Pg 320] trying to teach his lame foot to keep up with his strong foot. So when General Ward overhauled him, Barclay was annoyed. He was not the man to have his purposes crossed, even when they were whims. ”

“ Barclay, sat looking at their star while the terror in their hearts made their lips mute. God makes men brave who stand where bullets fly, yet always they can run away. But God seems to give no alternative to women at home who have to wait and dread.
Forty years later John Barclay took from a box in a safety vault back of his office in the city a newspaper. It was the Sycamore Ridge Banner, yellow and creased and pungent with age. "This," he said to Senator Myton, spreading the wrinkled sheet out on the mahogany table, "this is my enlistment paper." ”

“ Berkeley was well enough to meet with in men's society, at mess, on parade, on the turf, or in the hunting-field; but though handsome and perfectly well-bred, for his manners were generally unexceptionable, he was not a man for the drawing-room. He was master of a splendid fortune, which was left him by his father, a plain old Scotchman, who had begun life as a drayman, and whose patronymic was simply John Dewar Barclay. ”

“ Her Little Boy Blue had come back to her. Oh, bliss unutterable! Why worry about the future?
"How silly we were, dear!" he said. "How silly to suppose we could part like that—you and I!" Then his sudden merry laugh rang out—oh, such music! such sweet music! "I say, Christobel," he said, "it is all very well now to say 'Stop, and be good.' But on the seventh day, when the walls fall down, and I march up into the citadel, I shall give you millions of kisses—or will it be billions?"
"Judging from my knowledge of you, Boy dear," she said, "I rather think it would be billions." ”

“ Day after day, until the days and nights became a week and the week repeated itself until nearly a month was gone, John Barclay, dry-eyed and all but dumb, paced the terrace before his house by night, and by day roamed through the noisy mill or wandered through his desolate house, seeking peace that would not come to him. The whole foundation of his scheme of life was crumbling beneath him. He had built thirty-five years of his manhood upon the theory that the human brain is the god of things as they are and as they must be. ”

“ It had seemed indeed a lifetime to the Prioress of the White Ladies, during the first days of her return to the world. But to the woman who now kneeled at the casement, drinking in the balmy sweetness of the summer night, looking with soft yearning eyes at the well-remembered landscape flooded in silvery moonlight, it seemed—a night.
A night—since she stood on the battlements, her lover's arms about her.
A night—since she said: "Thou wilt come back to me, Hugh. . . . My love will ever be around thee as a silver shield." ”

“ Then he heard again her voice in the arbour of golden roses, saying, in those low sweet tones which thrilled his very soul: "He stood to me for all that was vital and alive, in life and in religion; strong to act; able to endure."
During five minutes the Bishop sat, eyes closed, hands firmly clasped.
So still he sat, that the little Knight of the Bloody Vest, watching, with bright eyes, from the tree overhead, almost made up his mind to drop to the other end of the seat. He was missing Sister Mary Antony, who had not appeared at all that morning. ”

“ Shall we sit gawking while a boy gropes his way out of a man's life, back through forty years, and puts his head in shame and sorrow against a mother's breast? How he stumbles and falters and halts, as the truth comes out—and it must come out; on the whole the best thing there is to say of John Barclay on that fateful December day in the year of our Lord 1903 is that he did not let his mother learn the truth from any lips but his. And so it follows naturally, because he was brave and kind, that instead of having to strengthen her, she sustained him—she in her seventies, he in his fifties. ”

“ The old garden was very still. A hush, as of the Paradise of God, seemed suddenly to fall upon it. As the Boy asked his quiet question, a spirit seemed to hover, between them and the green dome of mulberry leaves above them, smoothing the Boy's tumbled hair, and touching the noble brow of the woman the Boy loved; a gentle, watching, thankful spirit—eternally remembering, and tenderly glad to be remembered. For a few moments the silence was a silence which could not be broken. The Boy lifted wondering eyes to the moving leaves. Christobel laid her hand upon his, as it gripped her chair. ”

“ We're responsible to a man like Barclay. He belongs to us more than any man of our own blood. Don't you realize—he's our fault—we've flung him into his position. We've made him what he is. He had an English father—Anne, and he has a claim on me I cannot and will not ignore. ”

“ The syce made no answer. He stroked the velvet nose of his charge and the stranger became aware from his attitude that they were no longer alone. She turned sharply, and the woman standing at the head of the steps immediately behind her returned her stare with a faint smile.
"Do you want Mr. Barclay?" she asked quietly.
"Yes, I do." The Eurasian hesitated. The fair-haired fragile-looking woman in the dark riding-habit seemed to frighten her.
"I've come all the way from Calcutta," she stammered.
"That's a long way. I'm sorry—Mr. Barclay is away—has been away for many weeks. ”

“ John Barclay as he reached for the rose on his broad mahogany desk across forty long years, and looking through a wide window, saw on the blank wall of a great hulk of a building half a mile away, the fine strong figure of a man with black shaggy hair on his young leonine head rise and wave his handkerchief to a woman with tears running down her face and anguish in her eyes, standing in a swarm of children. What indeed are sordid thorns when the "large white plumes are dancing"—what indeed? ”

“ She will abide by it; and so, Sir Knight, must you."
The rain had ceased. The storm was over. Sunshine flooded the cell.
Once more the Prioress spoke, and her voice was gentle.
"I know the disappointment to you must be grievous. You took great risks; you adventured much. How long you have plotted this intrusion, I know not. You have been thwarted in your evil purpose by the faithfulness of one old woman, our aged lay-sister, Mary Antony, who never fails to count the White Ladies as they go and as they return, and who reported at once to me that one more had returned than went. ”

“ It seems so far creditable to a government which has a good many sins at its charge, that, when this case came before the Duke of York and the Privy Council, on John Barclay’s petition, and both sides had been heard—namely, the uncle on one side, and the Lady Rowallan, with the three curators, Montgomery younger of Skelmorley, the Laird of Dunlop, and Mr John Stirling, minister of Irvine, on the other—they decided that the young Barclay was of age to act and choose curators for himself, and that the defenders were not bound to produce him in court ”

“ I will assure you I think not less myself; but you know when a body once falls-to they never know rightly where to leave-off, and so fares [it] with me. So might I see a good sight upon the thing that I would see it upon, as when I began to tell you about Andrew Hey’s hairy face, as I thought no more of landing you in the runnel of Digran, than William of Troal did of going to Belmunt in his shirts one night in spring, that his wife bade him set a-jar the door [to see] if the speckled cow was come home. ”

“ And so as the century is old the booming tide is full, and John Barclay in his power—a bubble in the Divine consciousness, a mere vision in the real world—stands stark mad before his phantasm, dreaming that it is all real, and chattering to his soul, "Hanno is a god." ”

“ He swung the lantern high. She saw the lovelight and the triumph, in his eyes. "I shall take thee home!" he said.
She stepped back a pace, lifting both hands toward him, palms outward, and stood thus gazing, with eyes full of sorrow.
"My poor Hugh," she whispered; "it is useless to wait. I shall not come."
"Yet five days," said the Knight, "I shall tarry in Worcester. Each day, after Vespers, I shall be here."
"Go to-day, dear Hugh. Ride to Warwick and tell thy priest, that which indeed he should know without the telling: that a nun does not break her vows. This is our final farewell, Hugh. ”

“ Barclay shrugged his shoulders.
"A dying woman——? I can grant you that much."
But even in the midst of his brutal self-assertiveness, a merciless flash of intuition showed him himself as they saw him. His power slipped through his fingers. He looked from Sigrid to Tristram, and knew their immeasurable indifference to all that he could threaten. They were not afraid—almost—they were glad. He could not penetrate their mood—he only felt it as an intolerable hurt—a frustration of that madly aching desire in him. ”

“ He put his arms about her, holding her in a clasp of close possessive tenderness.
He did not yet understand what had happened; but he knew the great gift he desired had been given him. He waited for her to speak.
She lifted her face to his.
"Guy," she said; "ah, take me, hold me, keep me! I am altogether your own. I will explain to you fully, by and by. The stone was very great; but lo, as we reached it, the Angel of the Lord had rolled it away.... No other man has a shadow of claim over me. I am free to say, to the only man I have ever really loved: Take me; I am yours. ”

“ Over their heads, in the meadows, walked lovers, arm in arm; young men and maidens out in the gathering twilight. All nature, refreshed, poured forth a fragrant sweetness. But the rose, with its dewy petals, seemed to the youth less sweet than the lips of the maid. This, he shyly ventured to tell her; whereupon, as she bent to its fragrance, her cheeks reflected the crimson of those delicate folds.
So walked and talked young lovers in the Worcester meadows; little dreaming that, beneath their happy feet, the Knight and the Prioress paced slowly, side by side, through the darkness. ”

“ Ten months later Luke Sparrow, erect and vigorous, in the khaki uniform which had begun to mean so much to England, stood on his study hearth-rug, giving final instructions to his old servant.
“I’m in luck, Thomas. So early in the day; but I lost no time, and it’s France for me to-morrow; and, please God, that means Belgium, and in the thick of it. You will look after things, till I get back. Don’t let Mary fret. Give her a cheerful time.
“If I don’t return, my things will come back to you. My will is in that drawer. Everything will belong to you two faithful souls. ”