PARTED
Hard indeed would it be to find a happier marriage than that of Anthony
and Barbara. They adored each other. Never a shadow came between them.
Almost might it be said that their thoughts were one thought and their
hearts one heart. It is common to hear of twin souls, but how often are
they to be met with in the actual experience of life? Here, however,
they really might be found, or so it would seem. Had they been one
ancient entity divided long ago by the working of Fate and now brought
together once more through the power of an overmastering attraction,
their union could not have been more complete. To the eye of the
observer, and indeed to their own eyes, it showed neither seam nor flaw.
They were one and indivisible.
About such happiness as this there is something alarming, something
ominous. Mrs. Walrond felt it from the first, and they, the two persons
concerned, felt it also.
“Our joy frightens me,” said Anthony to Barbara one day. “I
feel like that Persian monarch who threw his most treasured ring into
the sea because he was too fortunate; you remember the sea refused the
offering, for the royal cook found it in the mouth of a fish.”
“Then, dear, he was doubly fortunate, for he made his sacrifice and
kept his ring.”
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. Well, it may be so, but if it is,
at least we shall have had the happiness, which having been, will
remain for ever, a part of you, a part of me; a temple of our love not
built with hands in which we shall offer thanks eternally, here
and—beyond,” and she nodded towards the glory of the sunset sky,
then turned and kissed him.
As it chanced, that cruel devouring sea which rages at the feet of all
mankind was destined ere long to take the offering that was most
precious to these two. Only this was flung to its waters, not by their
hands, but by that of Fate, nor did it return to them again.
After their marriage Anthony and Barbara hired a charming little
Georgian house at Chelsea near to the river. The drawback to the
dwelling was that it stood quite close to a place of public
entertainment called “The Gardens,” very well known in those days
as the nightly haunt of persons who were not always as respectable as
they might have been. During their sojourn in London they never entered
these Gardens, but often in the summer evenings they passed them when
out for the walks which they took together, since Anthony spent most of
his days at the Temple, studying law in the chambers of a leading
barrister. Thus their somewhat fantastic gateway became impressed upon
Barbara’s mind, as did the character of the people who frequented
them. As, however, their proximity reduced the rent of their own and
neighbouring houses by about one-half, personally they were grateful to
these Gardens, since the noise of the bands and the dancing did not
trouble them much, and those who danced could always be avoided.
When they had been married nearly a year a little daughter was born to
them, a sweet baby with violet eyes like to those of Barbara. Now
indeed their bliss was complete, but it was not fated that it should
remain, since the hungry sea took its sacrifice. The summer was very
hot in London, and many infants sickened there of some infantile
complaint, among them their own child. Like hundreds of others, it died
when only a few months old and left them desolate.
Perhaps Anthony was the more crushed of the two, since here Barbara’s
vivid faith came to her aid.
“We have only lost her for a little while,” she said, choking back
her tears as she laid some flowers on the little grave. “We shall find
her again; I know that we shall find her again, and meanwhile she will
be happier than she could have been with us in this sad world.”
Then they walked back home, pushing their way through the painted crowds
that were gathering at the gates of “The Gardens,” and listening to
the strains of the gay music that jarred upon their ears.
In due course, having been called to the Bar, Anthony entered the
chambers of an eminent Common Law leader. Although his prospects were
now good, and he was ere long likely to be independent of the
profession, he was anxious to follow it and make a name and fortune for
himself. This indeed he would have found little difficulty in doing,
since soon he showed that he had studied to good purpose; moreover, his
gifts were decidedly forensic. He spoke well and without nervousness;
his memory was accurate and his mind logical. Moreover, he had
something of that imaginative and sympathetic power which brings an
advocate success with juries.
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 returning
home to fetch a warm coat, and as a result took a severe cold. During
the winter following the funeral this cold settled on his lungs. At
last towards the spring the crisis came. He was taken seriously ill,
and on his partial recovery several doctors held a consultation over
him. Their verdict was that he must give up his profession, which
fortunately now he was in a position to do, live in the country and as
much in the open air as possible, spending the worst months of the
winter either in the South of England or in some warmer land. 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. At the same time, she pointed out that as they
were now very well off she saw no reason why he should continue to
slave at a profession which might or might not bring him an adequate
return fifteen or twenty years later. She added that personally she
detested London, and would like nothing better than to live at Eastwich
near her own people. Also she showed him that his rather extensive
estate needed personal attention, and could be much improved in value if
he were there to care for it.
The end may be guessed; Anthony gave up the Bar and the house in
Chelsea. After staying at Torquay for a few of the winter months, where
his health improved enormously, they moved to Eastwich during the
following May. Here their welcome was warm indeed, not only from the
Rectory party, who rejoiced to have Barbara back among them, but from
the entire neighbourhood, including the tenants and labourers on the
property.
The ensuing summer was one of the happiest of their married life.
Anthony became so much better that Barbara began to believe he had
thrown off his lung weakness. Certain repairs and rearrangements of
their old Elizabethan house agreeably occupied their time, and, to
crown all, on Christmas Eve Barbara gave birth to a son, an
extraordinarily fine and vigorous child, red-haired, blue-eyed, and so
far as could be seen at that early age entirely unlike either of his
parents.
The old doctor who ushered him into the world remarked that he had never
seen a more splendid and perfect boy, nor one who appeared to possess a
robuster constitution.
In due course Mr. Walrond christened him by the name of Anthony, after
his father, and a dinner was given to the tenants and labourers in
honour of the event.
That same month, there being a dearth of suitable men with an adequate
knowledge of the law, Anthony, who already was a magistrate, though so
young, was elected a Deputy-Chairman of Quarter Sessions for his
county. This local honour pleased him very much, since now he knew that
his legal education would not be wasted, and that he would have an
opportunity of turning it to use as a judge of minor cases.
Yet this grateful and conciliatory appointment in the end brought him
evil and not good. The first Quarter Sessions at which he was called
upon to preside in one of the courts fell in February, when he ought to
have been out of the East of England. The calendar was heavy, and
Anthony acquitted himself very well in the trial of some difficult
cases, earning the compliments of all concerned. But on leaving the hot
court after a long day he caught a heavy cold, which awoke his latent
complaint, and from that time forward he began to go down hill.
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.
Moreover, it brought him into touch with Nature, and now that they were
so near to parting, his friendship with her grew very close.
This was one of his troubles, that when he died, and he knew that before
very long he must die, even if he continued to live in some other form,
he must bid farewell to the Nature that he knew.
Of course, there was much of her, her cruel side, that he would rejoice
to lose. He could scarcely conceive a future existence framed upon
those lines of struggle, which in its working involves pain and cruelty
and death. 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. Why should the faithful
horse be knocked on the head when it grew old, or the poor cow go to
the butcher as a reward for its long career of usefulness and profit?
What relentless power had thus decreed? In any higher life surely this
decree would be rescinded, and of that side of Nature he had seen more
than enough upon the earth. It was her gentler and harmless aspects
from which he did not wish to part—from the flower and the fruit,
from the springing blade and the ripened corn; from the beauty that
brooded over sea and land; from the glory of the spreading firmament
alive with light, and the winds that blew beneath it, and the rains
that washed the face of earth; from the majestic passage of the
glittering stars shedding their sweet influences through the night. To
bid farewell to such things as these must, to his mind, indeed be
terrible.
Once he said as much to Barbara, who thought a while and answered him:
“Why should we be taken beyond all things? If 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 that
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; a new earth indeed, but
not one so different to the old as to be utterly unfamiliar.”
Anthony said no more of the matter at this time, but it must have
remained in his mind. At any rate, a month or two later when he woke up
one morning he said to Barbara:
“Will you laugh very much if I tell you of a dream that came to me
last night—if it was a dream, for I seemed to be still awake?”
“Why should I laugh at your dream?” she asked, kissing him.
“I often think that there is as much truth in dreams as in anything
else. Tell it to me.”
“I dreamed that I saw a mighty landscape which I knew was not of the
earth. It came to me like a picture, and a great stillness brooded over
it. At the back of this landscape stood a towering cliff of stern rock
thousands of feet high. Set at intervals along the edge of the cliff
were golden figures, mighty and immovable. Whether they were living
guards or only statues I do not know, for I never came near to them.
Here and there, miles apart, streams from the lands beyond poured over
the edge of the cliff in huge cascades of foam that became raging
torrents when they reached its lowest slopes. One of these rivers fed a
lake which lay in a chasm on the slopes, and from either end of this
lake poured two rivers which seemed to me about twenty miles apart, as
we should judge. They ran through groves of cedars and large groups of
forest trees not unlike to enormous oaks and pines, and yet not the
same.
“One river, that to the right if I looked towards the lake, was very
broad, so broad that after it reached the plain and flowed slowly, great
ships could have sailed upon it. The other, that to the left, was
smaller and more rapid, but it also wandered away across the plain till
my sight could follow it no farther. I observed that the broad,
right-hand river evidently inundated its banks in seasons of flood,
much as the Nile does, and that all along those banks were fields
filled with rich crops, of what sort I do not know. The plain itself,
which I take it was a kind of delta, the gift of the great river, was
limitless. It stretched on and on, broken only by forests, along the
edges of which moved many animals.
“When first I saw this landscape it was suffused with a sweet and
pearly light, that came not from sun or moon or stars, but from a
luminous body in shape like a folded fan, of which the handle rested on
the earth. By degrees this fan began to open; I suppose that it was the
hour of dawn. Its ribs of gorgeous light spread themselves from one
side of heaven to the other and were joined together by webs of a
thousand colours, of such stuff as the rainbow, only a hundred times
more beautiful. The reflection from these rainbow webs lay upon the
earth, divided by and sometimes mingled with those from the bars of
light, and made it glorious.
“All these things I saw from an eminence on which I stood that rose
between the rivers at the head of the plain. At length, overcome by the
splendour, drunk as it were with beauty, I turned to look behind me, and
there, quite close, in the midst of stately gardens with terraces and
trees and fountains and banks of flowers, I saw a house, and—now
indeed you will laugh—for so far as I can recollect it, in general
style it was not unlike our own; that is to say, its architecture
seemed to be more or less Elizabethan. If one who was acquainted with
Elizabethan buildings had gone to that land and built a house from
memory, but with more beautiful materials, he might have produced such
a one as I imagined in my dream.
“Presently from the door of the house emerged two figures. One of
these was my brother George and the other, Barbara, was our baby grown
to a little fair-haired child. The child perceived me first and ran to
me through the flowers. It leapt into my arms and kissed me. Then my
brother came and said—I do not mean he spoke, but his meaning was
conveyed to me:
“‘You see, we are making your home ready. We hope that you will
like it when you come, but if not you can change it as you wish.’
“Then I woke up, or went to sleep—I do not know which.”
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?
The thing stood self-convicted. Echo, echo, echo, flung back in mockery
of our agonised pleadings from the cliffs of the Beyond.
And yet this dream haunted her, especially as it returned to him more
than once, always with a few added details. They often talked of this
supernatural landscape and of the great radiant fan which closed at
night and opened itself by day, wherewith it was illuminated. Barbara
thought it strange that Anthony should have imagined so splendid a
thing. And yet why should he not have done so? If she could picture it
in her own mind, why should he not be able to originate it in his.
She told him all this, only avoiding allusions to the child, the baby
Barbara whom they had lost. For of this child, although she longed to
ask him details as to her supposed appearance, she could not bring
herself to speak. Supposing that he were right, supposing that their
daughter was really growing up yonder towards some celestial womanhood,
and waiting for him and waiting for her, the mother upon whose breast
she had lain, the poor, bereaved mother. Oh! then would not all be
worth while?
Anthony listened and said that he agreed with her; as a lawyer he had
analysed the dream and found in it nothing at all. Nothing more, for
instance, than on analysis is to be found in any and every religion.
“And yet,” he added, with that pleasant smile of his which was
beginning to grow so painfully sweet and plaintive in its character,
“and yet, it is very odd how real that landscape and that house are
becoming to me. Do you know, Barbara, that the other night I seemed to
be sitting in it in a great cool room, looking out at the river and the
vast fertile plain. Then you came in, my dear, clad in a beautiful robe
embroidered with violets. Yes, you came in glancing round you timidly
like one who had lost her way, and saw me and cried aloud.”
Towards the end Anthony grew worse with a 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.
Up to the middle of October he managed to get out upon the farm on fine
days to see to the drilling of the wheat and so forth. One rather rough
afternoon he went out thus, not because he wished to, but for the sake
of his spaniel dog, Nell, which bothered him to come into the fresh
air. Not finding something that he sought, he was drawn far afield and
caught in a tempest of rain and wind, through which he must struggle
home. Barbara who, growing anxious, had gone to seek him, found him
leaning against an oak unable to speak, with a little stream of blood
trickling from the corner of his mouth. Indeed, it was the dog, which
seemed distressed, that discovered her and led her to him.
This was Anthony’s last outing, but he lived till Christmas Eve, his
son’s eighth birthday. That morning the boy was brought into his room
to receive some present that his father had procured for him, and
warned that he must be very quiet. Quiet, however, he would not be; his
tumultuous health and strength seemed to forbid it. He racketed about
the room, teasing the spaniel which lay by the side of the bed, until
the patient beast growled at him and even bit, or pretended to bite
him. Thereon he set up such a yell of pain, or anger, or both, that his
father struggled from the bed to see what was the matter, and so
brought on the haemorrhage which caused his death.
“I am afraid you will have trouble with that child, Barbara,” he
gasped shortly before the end. “He seems to be different from either
of us; but he is our son, and I know that you will do your best for
him. I leave him in your keeping. Good night, dearest, I want to go to
sleep.”
Then he went to sleep, and Barbara’s heart broke.