Barbara Who Came Back/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III
AUNT MARIA
Six months or so had gone by, and summer reigned royally at Eastwich, for thus was the parish named of which the Reverend Septimus Walrond had spiritual charge. The heath was a blaze of gold, the cut hay smelt sweetly in the fields, the sea sparkled like one vast sapphire, the larks beneath the sun and the nightingales beneath the moon sang their hearts out on Gunter’s Hill, and all the land was full of life and sound and perfume.
On one particularly beautiful evening, after partaking of a meal called “high tea,” Barbara, quite strong again now, and blooming like the wild rose at her breast, set out alone upon a walk. Her errand was to the cottage of that very fisherman whose child her father had baptized on the night when her life trembled in the balance. Having accomplished it, she turned homewards lost in reverie, events having happened at the Rectory which gave her cause for thought. When she had gone a little way some instinct led her to look up. About fifty yards off a man was walking towards her, to all appearance also lost in reverie. Even at that distance and in the uncertain evening light, she knew well enough that this was Anthony. Her heart leapt at the sight of him and her cheeks seemed to catch the hue of the wild rose on her bosom. Then she straightened her dress a little and walked on.
In less than a minute they had met.
“I heard where you had gone and came to meet you,” he said awkwardly. “How well you are looking, Barbara, how well and” he had meant to add, “beautiful,” but his tongue stumbled at the word and what he said was—“brown.”
“If I were an Indian I suppose I should thank you for the compliment, Anthony, but as it is I don’t know. But how well you are looking, how well and, by comparison, fat!”
Then they both laughed, and he explained at length how he had been able to get home two days earlier than he expected; also that he had taken his degree with even higher honours than he hoped.
“I am so glad,” she said earnestly.
“And so am I; I mean glad that you are glad. You see, if it hadn’t been for you, I should never have done so well. But because I thought you would be pleased, I worked like anything.”
“You should have thought of what your father would feel, not of—of—well, it has all ended as it should, so we needn’t argue. How is your brother George?” she went on, cutting short the answer that was rising to his lips. “I suppose I should call him Captain Arnott now, for I hear he has been promoted. We haven’t seen him since he came home last week—from some hospital in the south of England, they say.”
Anthony’s face grew serious. “I don’t know; I don’t quite like the look of him, and he coughs such a lot. It seems as though he could not shake off that chill he got in the trenches. That’s why he hasn’t been to call at the Rectory.”
“I hope this beautiful weather will cure him,” Barbara replied rather doubtfully, for she had heard a bad report of George Arnott’s health. Then to change the subject she added, “Do you know, we had a visitor yesterday. Aunt Maria in the flesh—in a great deal of flesh, as Janey says.”
“Do you mean Lady Thompson?”
She nodded. “Aunt Thompson and her footman and her pug-dog. Thank goodness, she only stayed to tea, as she had a ten-mile drive back to her hotel. As it was, lots of things happened.”
“What happened?”
“Well, first, when she got out of the carriage, covered with jet anchor chains—for you know Uncle Samuel only died three months ago, and left her all his money—she caught sight of our heads staring at her out of the drawing-room window, and asked father if he kept a girls’ school. Then she made mother cry by remarking that she ought to be thankful to Providence for having taken to its bosom the four of us who died young—you know she has no children herself, and so can’t feel about them. Also father was furious because she told him that at least half of us should have been boys. He turned quite pink and said, ‘I have been taught, Lady Thompson, that these are matters which God Almighty keeps in His own hands, and to Him I must refer you.’
“‘Good gracious! don’t get angry,’ she answered. ‘If you clergymen can cross-examine your Maker, I am not in that position. Besides they are all very good-looking girls, who may find husbands, if they ever see a man. So things might have been worse.’
“Then she made remarks about the tea, for Uncle Samuel was a tea-merchant; and lastly that wicked Janey sent the footman to take the pug-dog for a walk past the butcher’s shop where the fighting terrier lives. You can guess the rest.”
“Was the pug killed?” asked Anthony.
“No, though the poor thing came back in a bad way. I never knew before that a pug’s tail was so long when it is quite uncurled. But the footman looked almost worse, for he got notice on the spot. You see, he went into the Red Dragon, and left the pug outside.”
“And here endeth Aunt Maria and all her works,” said Anthony, who wanted to talk of other things.
“No, not quite.”
He looked at her, for there was meaning in her voice.
“In fact,” she went on, “so far as I am concerned it ought to run, Here beginneth Aunt Maria. You see, I have got to go and live with her to-morrow.”
Anthony stopped and stared at her. “What the devil do you mean?” he asked.
“What I say. She took a fancy to me, and she wants a companion, someone to do her errands and read to her at night and look after the pug-dog, and so forth. And she will pay me thirty pounds a year, with my board and dresses, And” (with gathering emphasis) “we cannot afford to offend her, who have half lived upon her alms and old clothes for so many years. And in short Dad and my mother thought it best that I should go, since Joyce can take my place, and at any rate it will be a mouth the less to feed at home. So I am going to-morrow morning by the carrier’s cart.”
“Going?” gasped Anthony. “Where to?”
“To London first, then to Paris, then to Italy, to winter at Rome, and then goodness knows where. You see, my Aunt Maria has wanted to travel all her life, but Uncle Samuel, who was born in Putney, feared the sea, and lived and died in the very house in which he was born. Now Aunt Maria wants a change, and means to have it.”
Then Anthony broke out. “Damn the old woman! Why can’t she take her change wherever it is she wants to go to, and leave you alone?”
“Anthony!” said Barbara in a scandalised voice. “What do you mean, Anthony, by using such dreadful language about my aunt?”
“What do I mean? Well” (this with the recklessness of despair), “if you want to know, I mean that I can’t bear your going away.”
“If my parents,” began Barbara steadily
“What have your parents to do with it? I’m not your parents, I’m your”
Barbara looked at him in remonstrance.
“old friend, played together in childhood—you know the kind of thing. In short, I don’t want you to go to Italy with Lady Thompson. I want you to stop here.”
“Why, Anthony? I thought you told me you were going to live in chambers in London and read for the Bar.”
“Well, London isn’t Italy, and one doesn’t eat dinners at Lincoln’s Inn all the year round, one comes home sometimes. And heaven knows whom you’ll meet in those places, or what tricks that horrible old aunt of yours will be playing with you. Oh! it’s wicked! How can you desert your poor father and mother in this way, to say nothing of your sisters? I never thought you were so hard-hearted.”
“Anthony,” said Barbara in a gentle voice, “do you know what we have got to live on? In good years it comes to about £150, but once, when my father got into that lawsuit over the dog that was supposed to kill the sheep, it went down to £70. That was the winter when two of the little ones died for want of proper food—nothing else—and remember that the rest of us had to walk barefoot in the mud and snow, because there was no money to buy us boots, and only some of us could go out at once, because we hadn’t a cloak apiece. Well, all this may happen again. And so, Anthony, do you think that I should be right to throw away thirty pounds a year, and to make a quarrel with my aunt, who is rich and kind-hearted, although very overbearing, and the only friend we have? If my father died, Anthony, or even was taken ill—and he is not very strong—what would become of us? Unless Aunt Thompson chose to help, we should all have to go to the workhouse, for girls who have not been specially trained can earn nothing, except perhaps as domestic servants, if they are strong enough. I don’t want to go away and read to Aunt Maria, and take the pug-dog out walking, although it is true I should like to see Italy, but I must—can’t you understand?—I must. So please reproach me no more, for it is hard to bear—especially from you.”
“Stop! 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.
Then for a while she sought nothing more, who found herself lost in her lover’s arms.
So there they plighted their troth, that was, they swore, more enduring than the moon, for indeed they so believed.
“Nothing shall part us except death,” he said.
“Why should death part us?” she answered, looking him bravely in the eyes. “I mean to live beyond death; and while I live, and wherever I live, death shall not part us, if you’ll be true to me.”
“I’ll not fail in that,” he said.
And so their souls melted into rapture, and were lifted up beyond the world. The song of the nightingales was heavenly music in their ears, and the moon’s rays upon the sea were the road by which their linked souls travelled to the throne of Him who had lit their lamp of love, and made petition that through all life’s accidents and death’s darkness it might burn eternally.
For the love of these two was deep and faithful, and already seemed to them as though it were a thing they had lost a while, and found once more; a very precious jewel that from the beginning had shone upon their breasts; a guiding star that should light them to the end, which is the dawn of Endlessness.
Who will not smile at such thoughts as these? The way of the man with the maid, and the way of the maid with the man, and the moon to light them, and the birds to sing the epithalamium of their hearts, and the great sea to murmur of eternity in their opened ears. Nature at her sweet work beneath the gentle night—who is there that will not say that it was nothing more?
Well, let their story answer.