Barbara Eden

“ Here’s to the company of the Dead, who will never hear or see or feel anything more from everlasting to everlasting. Amen.”
Then he drank off the second half-tumbler of brandy, hid his face in his hands and began to sob, muttering: “Mother, why did you leave me? Oh, mother, come back to me, mother, and save my soul from hell!”
Barbara and Anthony awoke from their dream of the dreadful earth and looked into each other’s hearts. “It is true,” said their hearts, which could not lie, and with those words all the glory of their state faded to a grey nothingness. ”

“ The venture, of course, was a mad one, but with his help it might well be carried through to success. As she talked on, an intoxication of enthusiasm and sympathy tingled along his blood and rose to his brain. Difficulties vanished, or displayed themselves to his deluded imagination only as obstacles which it would be splendid to overcome. In the ordinary affairs of life the boy was cool, judicious, reasonable, to a degree immeasurably beyond his years; but Barbara's strange magnetism had called forth the dreamer and the poet lurking at the foundations of his character ”

“ Yet it brought home to Barbara the grim fact of her loss more completely than perhaps anything had done. Her beloved husband was dead, of no more account in the world than those who had passed from it at Eastwich a thousand years ago. He was dead, and soon would be forgotten by all save her, and she was alone, in heart utterly alone.
The summer came and everyone grew cheerful. Aunt Thompson arrived at the Hall to stay, and urged Barbara to put away past things and resign herself to the will of Providence—as she had done in the case of the departed Samuel. ”

“ Italians or Americans—all are alike to her. She will give up anything for herself in order to do for them."
"I am glad you know her so well," said his uncle, with a smile. "There is no danger that you can ever admire your mother too much."
"Oh!" exclaimed Barbara, as after a little walk they entered a square surrounded by massive buildings, with arcades, all white with the sunshine. "Look at that building! It is decorated with those dear little babies, all swathed, whose photographs we have so often seen in the Boston art stores. What is it? Where are we?" ”

“ During these days, had there been any one to observe her, she was a pathetic little figure, with her thin legs like black sticks, her saucer eyes that so readily filled with tears, her eager, half-apprehensive expression, the passionate clutch of the doll to her heart, and it is, after all, a painful business, this adoration—no human soul can live up to the heights of it, and, what is more, no human soul ought to.
As Mary grew tired of Barbara she allowed to slip from her many of the virtuous graces that had hitherto, for Barbara's benefit, adorned her. ”

“ Sighing heavily, she went at last, in a street dress, to open the bow-window which looked upon Red Cock Street.
Barbara felt as if she had outgrown herself. The pathos which she had often expressed in singing solemn church music took possession of her, and left no room in her soul for any frivolous emotion. Proud of the lofty passion which drew her with such mighty power to her lover’s arms, she cast aside the remorse, the anxiety, the deep sense of wrong which had overpowered her on her return home.
What was greater than the certainty of being beloved by the greatest of men? ”

“ Pleasant cottages arose, like enchantment, all over her vast estates; school-houses reared their modern fronts among the moss-grown buildings of past times. Wherever industry could be encouraged by rewards, it was generously fostered. With so many human beings depending upon her efforts for their advancement in life, she held the sorrows that always lay heavy at her heart in abeyance, and stilled the yearnings of a loving nature by constant self-abnegation.
Barbara lived a solitary life so far as intercourse with her peers went. ”

“ Oh! happy was her life with Anthony, for there, though now sex as we know it had ceased to be, spirit grew ever closer to spirit, and as below they dreamed and hoped, their union had indeed become an altar on which Love’s perfect fire flamed an offering to Heaven. Happy, too, was her communion with those other souls that had been mingled in her lot, and with many more whom she had known aforetime and elsewhere and long forgotten. For Barbara learned that life is an ancient story of which we spell out the chapters one by one. ”

“ It is a mean price for which he has sold his peace of conscience—“the sweetness of the cup that is charged with poison, the beauty of the serpent whose bite is death.”
Eden, who is seated reading on one of the benches by the wall, has recovered from his illness, but he is not, and never will be, what, but for Harpour’s brutality, he might have been. He is a nervous, timid, intellectual boy. No game, unfortunately, has any attraction for him. ”

“ For God’s sake, stop!” said Anthony, “I am a brute to have spoken like that, and I’m helpless; that’s the worst of it. Oh! my darling, don’t you understand? Don’t you understand?”
“No,” answered Barbara, shaking her head and beginning to cry.
“That I love you, that I have always loved you, and that I always shall love you until—until—the moon ceases to shine,” and he pointed to that orb which had appeared above the sea.
“They say it is dead already, and no doubt will come to an end in due course like everything else,” remarked Barbara, seeking to gain time. ”

“ To sit on his knee, twining her small fingers in the black curls which fell unshorn upon his shoulders—to look in his great dark eyes as they gleamed with the enthusiasm of that half-poetic nature which is the inheritance of a high-hearted mountaineer—to feel herself nestling like a dove on his broad breast, and clinging to him half in terror, half in delight, as his strong words brought all those fearful shapes vividly before her eyes—these had been Barbara’s pleasures when a little child. ”

“ Barbara could not "place" it about; she had neither optimism nor a sense of humour sufficient. But she wanted it—wanted it terribly. If she were not to be allowed to indulge her imagination, then must she, all the more, love some one with fervour: the two things were interdependent. She surveyed her world with an eye to this possible loving. There was her governess, who had been with her for a year now, tearful, bony, using Barbara as a means and never as an end. Barbara did not love her—how could she? ”

“ Barbara went apart into a wilderness where thorns grew and there endured the agony of temptation. On the one hand lay the pure life of joy which, like the difficult path that had been shown to her, led upwards, ever upwards to yet greater joy, shared with those she loved. On the other hand lay the seething hell of Earth, to be once more endured through many mortal years and—a soul to save alive. None might counsel her, none might direct her. She must choose and choose alone. ”

“ You've just come!"
"I must help to get things ready for Aunt Anne," Barbara said gaily, for she had recovered her spirits since procuring the children's promise of good behaviour. "I'll come to you later."
"Barbara is really rather an angel," remarked Donald after she had gone. "It's not many sisters would slave in the house, instead of having another maid, to let a fellow go to a decent school."
"You're quoting mother," Frances replied, hanging out of the window in a dangerous position; "but, of course, it's true. If I only had time I'd write a fascinating romance about her." ”

“ Then the surveyor turned his gaze again upon the Navajo rug.
"I know you are tired," said the young woman again. "You have so much to think about with all those men to look after and daddy away. Come now; you sit right over here in this easy chair and shut your eyes and smoke and forget all about the work and everything, while I make a little music for you."
Barbara did not realize how she tried this man of the desert with a glimpse of a heaven that Abe knew could never be for him. ”

“ And now that Barbara believed she knew more about him than he did himself; now that the road appeared to lie open between them, would she escape falling in love with such a man whose hands of labour were mastered with a head full of understanding, and whose head was quickened by a heart in which dwelt an imagination at once receptive and productive? Could any true woman despise the love of such a workman?
From this time, for some weeks, they saw less of each other. Without knowing it, Barbara had, since the revelation of Alice, grown a little shy of Richard. ”

“ Barbara had often used them when watching in the dusk of evening for her lover's litter or, at a still later hour, for the torch-bearers who preceded it.
She could already walk firmly enough to mount the few rough steps which led to the opening in the rocks and, obeying the tameless yearning of her heart, she rose from the arm-chair and walked as rapidly as her feeble strength permitted toward the frigidarium. ”

“ In return for his snapshots of the Mirador and its garden, Barbara sent photographs taken by herself of Gorston Old Hall. One of these showed the lake, with a bow-windowed corner of the black and white house mirrored in it—the very spot where Sir John Denin had asked Barbara Fay to be his wife. “The place I love best,” she said. ”

“ There was a great wind wailing over the sea, on the day that Barbara’s letter was brought to Denin. The wind seemed to come from the four corners of the earth, laden with all the stormy sorrow of the world since men and women first loved and lost each other. The voice was old as death and young as life, and the heartbreak of unending processions of lovers was the message it brought to the Mirador garden. ”

“ As Martina opened the door of the sitting room a loud conversation in men's voices became audible, and with the deep, resonant tones of the syndic Barbara recognised the higher, less powerful ones of the man whom she was seeking.
The kiss of the scarcely unfolded bud of girlhood, the child of a mother whose presence in the Convivium had often helped her to curb an impetuous impulse, pleased Barbara, and yet awakened the painful feeling that in accepting it without resistance she was guilty of a deception. ”

“ That mother of his don’t know how to manage him. She’s another breed.”
“Yes,” said the questioner, “the mistress is a lady, she is, and gentle like the squire who’s gone. But how did they get such a one as Master Anthony?”
“Don’t know,” replied Bess; “but father says that when he was a boy in the Fens, they’d have told that the fairy folk changed him at birth. Any way, I like him well enough, for he suits me.”
Barbara went back to her sitting-room, where not long afterwards the boy came to her. ”

“ Barbara breathed her contrition. "I never dreamed——"
"No one ever does," faltered Miss Sarah. "I—I am an old, faded, hopelessly unmarried woman to you, my dear—oh, child, you need not protest a kinder opinion! I am just 'Caleb Hunter's spinster sister' to the people of this village. But to—to myself, Barbara, I am at times the same girl who waited, roses in her hair and roses in her cheeks, for him to come, so that I might tell him that I was his, body and soul. And he never came! Oh, my dear, I do not mean to break down like this, for you have your own heart-ache. ”

“ On my honor as a man there died within me during those few moments of torturing reflection all the love I had borne for Barbara. I awoke to the fact that it was not true love, but animal passion for her beauty, that had led me into this pit of shame and despair.
Some men arrive, by slow and devious roads, at a belief that shakes their faith to its foundations. Not so I. As surely as I knew that I lived and moved did I know that I was wedded to a drunkard, and that there was no civilized law that could divorce me from her. I was Barbara's shield and protector, her lord, her master, her victim. ”

“ These yearned back to their darkness and attained sometimes to other coverings of a mortal flesh, or to some land of which Barbara had no knowledge. For such was their fate if in them there was no spark of repentant spirit that in this new world could be fanned to flame.
Upwards or downwards, such is the law of a universe in which nothing can stand still. Up from the earth which Barbara had left came the spirit shape of all that lived and could die, even to that of the flower. But down to the earth it seemed that much of it was whirled again, to ascend once more in an age to come ”

“ Years passed on and Barbara had but one ungratified hope within her heart. God had given her no children, and the tenderness of her nature found no vent save in her kindly charities. To the poor, and needy, and sorrowful, she was the friend and benefactress, but her heart sometimes thrilled with a vain repining, and she felt a thirst for those pure waters which spring up only in a mother’s pathway. ”

“ She felt something like joy singing through the dreariness of her life, whenever the image of this young man presented itself. Why was it? she asked herself again and again. Were the blossoms of a new love springing up from her soul, after it had been laid waste for so many years? Had the ashes of dead hopes fertilized her life afresh, that she should feel this glow of affection, when the lad spoke or looked into her eyes?
Barbara was no girl to wave these questions with blushes. ”

“ May I not linger at your side long enough to ask you one question, you severe yet ardently beloved maiden?”
“Certainly not,” replied Barbara with repellent harshness. “I never gave you a right to speak to me of love; but, above all, I shall not seek the sharer of a game of question and answer in the street.”
“Then name a place,” he whispered with passionate ardour, trying meanwhile to clasp her hand, “where I may be permitted, in broad sunlight and before the eyes of the whole world, to say to you what robs me of rest by day and sleep by night. ”