Barin

“ But I’ve heard tell as how folks saw John Baring wandering about. He had a long white beard and he—”
“But he didn’t have a long white beard!” contradicted Elizabeth. “He wasn’t an old man, he wasn’t even middle-aged! It’s the mountaineers who go wandering about. They think the place is theirs.” ”

“ The old lady stood with her hand on the latch of the screen door, ready for instant flight.
“After I had been treated so rudely, I determined to find out what was the matter, so I went to an old gentleman in Gettysburg, Colonel Thomas, and he told me about John Baring.”
“He could tell you the truth! He was a soldier himself. He knows what John Baring did!”
[Pg 58] “Yes, he told me the truth, at least what seems like the truth. Then I came home. It’s very hard to learn suddenly that you are a descendant of a man whom his neighbors believe to be a traitor.” ”

“ He lifted his head and said the words that Elizabeth had said weeks before, “They shall not drive us away!” He had no [Pg 116] affection for the house of John Baring, and he shared but few of Elizabeth’s fond dreams of clearing his grandfather’s name of its stain, but he would not be coerced in this fashion. He despised the neighborhood which had for so long tolerated these desperadoes. ”

“ But I can’t forgive John Baring. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I can’t work for you. I don’t believe I could stay in the neighborhood. Folks wouldn’t be friendly with me; that is the way it would work out. I know you’re all right, a good, law-abiding citizen, and I’m sorry for you. You see, the folks round here are afraid of the Baring stock, that’s [Pg 84] the sum total of it. I am sorry for you, young lady. Ain’t there any other place that you can live?”
“I’ve talked to people about him,” said Elizabeth. “They all say he was considered to be a good man.” ”

“ The Arabs at Omdurman have the slave boy grinding away at their Nordenfeldt. I have sent one of our French mitrailleuses down to grind on them. If Baring does bump his way up here as British Commissioner, I shall consider he has expiated his faults and shall forgive him. We seldom realise our position. In ten or twelve years’ time Baring, Lord Wolseley, myself, Evelyn Wood, &c., will have no teeth, and will be deaf; some of us will be quite passé; no one will come and court us ”

“ Elizabeth bade him the time of day and asked him whether he remembered John Baring.
“Yes, I remember him,” said he. “Everybody remembers him about here. He set Chambersburg on fire. Three million dollars was lost and [Pg 62] thousands of people set out on the streets and animals driv’ off and all kinds of damage done. It was Baring done it. If he comes back, people will shoot him.”
Elizabeth asked no more questions. He had become, it seemed, to some, a sort of legendary demon! But she saw him, reaching up to write on the attic beam, “I have built this house the best I know. ”

“ With the death of Thomas Baring, Edward Charles Baring (1828–1897) , son of Henry Baring, M.P., and grandson of Sir Francis Baring, became head of the firm of Baring Brothers, and in 1885 was raised to the peerage as Baron Revelstoke. The house of Baring then stood at the height of its prosperity. During the following years a large amount of English capital was advanced to the Argentine Republic, Barings undertaking the loans and guaranteeing the interest. ”

“ One time they came to the conclusion that it was long since they had had a fight—and that it would be a very good thing to try and win the Baringa country. They did not want to go over the mountains unprepared. ”

“ Hambling went bright green in the middle of School, and had to retreat and be sick, which angered the priest; and Norgate—much about the same colour—went off to sleep in the middle of Baring’s Seamanship Lecture. The whole story came out, of course. It seems that Baring saw they were tight the evening before, but didn’t know how bad it was. ”

“ The firm of Baring Brothers was founded by Francis Baring (1740–1810) , whose father, John Baring, son of a Lutheran minister at Bremen, had come to England from Germany, and started a cloth manufactory at Larkbear, near Exeter. Francis Baring was born at Larkbear, and in due course was placed in a London commercial firm. In 1770, in conjunction with his brother John, Francis Baring established a banking-house in London, and before he died in 1810 had so developed the business that he was regarded as the first merchant in Europe. ”

“ To Sir Francis Baring, for his cordial support through a period of great difficulty, Sir Rowland Hill was deeply indebted. Many years after, when an old man, Sir Francis Baring stated that nothing gave him more satisfaction, when looking back upon his career, than the part he had taken in helping on the cause of Penny Postage. ”

“ His love poems are as playful as Heine's, as tender as Musset's; he can translate with equal spirit and exactness Byron and Horace, the Koran and Dante. Mr Baring selects two poems as examples of the greatness of his style and the force of his magic.
"As bitter as stale aftermath of wine
Is the remembrance of delirious days:
But as wine waxes with the years, so weighs
The past more sorely, as my days decline.
My path is dark. The future lies in wait,
A gathering ocean of anxiety.
But oh! my friends! to suffer, to create,
That is my prayer: to live and not to die! ”

“ Edward Baring-Gould, of Lew-Trenchard, Devon, where the family has resided for nearly 300 years, and of which place he is now the Rector. He is also Justice of the Peace for the County of Devon. He had written on various subjects of historical research before he took to novel-writing. ”

“ I suppose this must have been pretty well forgotten in all this time, especially as all the family had gone away, but a little while ago a book was published, ‘The Recollections and Letters of General Adams.’ This Confederate general said that John Baring had given them information about roads. That is why they hate us!”
“It isn’t our fault!”
“No.”
“What shall we do, Elizabeth?”
“We shan’t do anything right away. We’re here and we can live even if people won’t buy our things. Our trees are engaged and we’ll set them out. We—”
“Oh, let us go away!” cried Herbert. ”

“ But the father was puffed up with elation at seeing that his son had become so great a man. Neither lived to see him raised to the peerage.
Dunning was nearly fifty years old before he married, and then he took to him Elizabeth the daughter [Pg 630] of John Baring, of Exeter, who was half his age. They were married at St. Leonard’s by Exeter on 31 March, 1780, as at that time John Baring and his family resided at Larkbeare in that parish.
Lord North’s Ministry fell, and a new administration was undertaken by the Marquess of Rockingham. ”

“ One of his sons was ambassador to the King of Sardinia, and afterwards to Paris and Berlin. His eldest son, William, at an early age entered the service of the East India Company, and was secretary to Lord Macartney in his embassy to China. He amassed a considerable fortune in India, and married Frances, the only plain daughter of Charles Baring, of Courtlands, near Exmouth. One of the other daughters married Sir Stafford Northcote, Bart., of Pynes, another Sir Samuel Young, Bart., of Formosa Place, on the Thames. William purchased Cowley Barton, where he built Cowley House. ”

“ But one of ’em, Sheldon, went to the penitentiary for it, and there ain’t been any since. Now they’s often a constabulary round and they know it. This was Sheldon’s mammy what you [Pg 73] was visitin’. Sheldon has a strong-willed wife too. The women they’s gettin’ new notions. They go down sometimes an’ look at the Chambersburg trolley, and they twist up their hair different. It’s the women’s day, miss.”
Elizabeth thanked them for their protection, and walked on. After a while she smiled grimly. On the other side of the mountain they thought that John Baring had set Chambersburg afire. ”

“ They were just supplied, that is all. We’ll go on a day when there is no curb market.”
In encouraging Herbert, she forgot her own disturbance of mind. “We have ten dollars, at any rate, and that is as good as found.”
The June afternoon had grown cool; as the two drove across the grass to the doorway of the stone house the shadows of the mountain lay [Pg 17] darkly about them. The house looked larger; it might have appeared, to one who did not love it, sinister. In the stone above the door the name John Baring was deeply carved; it seemed to Elizabeth suddenly to have no relation to her ”

“ The Baron himself, it appears, revealed the infernal contract to one man, his cousin and dearest friend. When the confidant, rather horror-stricken, asked 'if he did not repent?' he only answered—'What is done is well done'—and thenceforward would answer no question, declining to the last the consolations of religion or the visits of a priest. But every one knows, that at his trial and on Tower-hill he bore himself as coolly and bravely as if he had been a martyred bishop. Let him rest in peace if he may! If he erred, he suffered. ”

“ The baron, though a small man, had a large soul, and it swelled with satisfaction at the consciousness of being the greatest man in the little world about him. He loved to tell long stories about the stark old warriors whose portraits looked grimly down from the walls around, and he found no listeners equal to those who fed at his expense. He was much given to the marvellous and a firm believer in all those supernatural tales with which every mountain and valley in Germany abounds. ”

“ Baroni stretched forth his right arm, and Josephine, with a bound, instantly sprang upon his shoulder; while she thus remained, balancing herself only on her left leg, and looking like a flying Victory, her father stretched forth his left arm, and Francis sprang upon the shoulder opposite to his sister, and formed with her a group which might have crowned a vase. Infinite were the postures into which, for more than half an hour, the brother and sister threw their flexible forms, and all alike distinguished for their agility, their grace, and their precision. ”

“ Both pursued thus the way to Monte Cassino; the peasant on foot, with his hands tied behind his back, urged on by the blows and taunts of the Goth, who followed on horseback, an image only too faithful of the two races which unhappy Italy enclosed within her distracted bosom, and which were to be judged and reconciled by the unarmed majesty of monastic goodness. When they had reached the summit of the mountain they perceived the abbot seated alone, reading at the door of his monastery. "Behold," said the prisoner turning to his tyrant, "there is the Father Benedict of whom I told thee." ”

“ He rose softly; he approached nearer to Tancred, and examined his countenance more closely; there was a slight foam upon the lip, which he gently wiped away.
'The brain has worked too much,' said Baroni to himself. 'Often have I watched him pacing the deck during our voyage; never have I witnessed an abstraction so prolonged and so profound. He thinks as much as M. de Sidonia, and feels more. There is his weakness. The strength of my master is his superiority to all sentiment. No affections and a great brain; these are the men to command the world. ”

“ The stablemen of the castle came forward and led away the horses. The sixteen knights stood in a group together with Segfried at their head, waiting with some anxiety on their brows for the next move in the game. The Baron, his sword drawn in his hand, strode up and down before them, his brow bent on the ground, evidently struggling to get the master hand over his own anger. If it came to blows the odds were against him and he was too shrewd a man to engage himself single-handed in such a contest. ”

“ On the morrow Baroni was to ride one of the fat horses over to Berg, a neighbouring town of some importance, where there was even a little theatre to be engaged, and if he obtained the permission of the mayor, and could make fair terms, he proposed to give there a series of representations. The mother was to stay at home and take care of the grandmother; but the children, all the children, were to have a holiday, and to dine with Sidonia at his hotel. ”

“ Down the wide stairs from the Rittersaal came the clank of armour and rude shouts of laughter. Newly lighted torches flared up here and there, illuminating the courtyard, and showing, dangling against the northern wall a score of ropes with nooses at the end of each. Into the courtyard clattered the Baron and his followers. The Abbot stood with arms folded, pressing a gilded cross across his breast. He was a head taller than any of his frightened, cowering brethren, and his noble emaciated face was thin with fasting caused by his never-ending conflict with the world that was within himself. ”

“ You cannot get the honey without the flower.’
‘I see what it is,’ said the baron, losing his temper slightly. He was too well-bred and too easy-going a man to be greatly put out, and show it. ‘You want to carry off Mademoiselle yourself, and kill the beautiful blonde with chagrin.’
‘I amuse myself,’ answered Asheton, tapping his cigar against the ashpan on the table, and then throwing up his head again, and inhaling a long whiff of smoke. ”

“ Poor old Barney! We've got to make him feel comfortable. Tell him I bought a fork—no, a knife especially for him."
"Barney's as good as gold," returned Old Captain. "But, for a man of forty-seven, he's too dinged shy. 'Barney,' says I, more'n once, 'you'd ought to get married.' 'There's as good fish in the sea as ever come out,' says Barney. 'Yes,' says I, 'but ain't the bait gittin' some stale?'"
"Is it really September?" ”