CHAPTER VI
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.
