Barbara Heathcote's Trial ... By the author of 'Nellie's Memories' [i.e. R. N. Carey], etc

Front matter

BAEBAEA HEATHCOTE'S TKIAL. BARBARA HEATHCOTE'S TRIAL. a jiobti. BY THE ACTHOR OF •'NELLIE'S MEMORIES," AND "WEE WIFIE." "Sing of the nature of Woman, and then the song shall be surely full of variety, old crotchets, and most sweet closes. It shall be humorous, grave, fantastic, amorous, melancholy, sprightly, one in all, and all in one." — Marstgn. IN THEEE VOLUMES. VOL. III. LONDON: TINSLEY BEOTHEES, 18, CATHEEINE ST., STEAND. 1871. [All rights of Translation and Reproduction are reserved,.] LONDON : BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFR1ABS. CONTENTS. CHAP. PAGE I. THE WARP AND THE WOOF . . 1 II. LADY STRATH'S REVENGE . . . .28 in. Winnie's enigmas . . . 54 it. norman's vow . . . . .78 v. Barbara's trial . . . . 105 vi. the clouds deepen .... 137 VII. " I AM GOING TO MARRY MY FRIEND " . . 160 VIII.

FOOTSTEPS in the shrubbery . . . 183 IX. THE FAIRY PRINCE . . . . . 208 X. " WHEN WE TWO PARTED "... 231 XI. THE DARK ANGEL . . . . . 259 XIL THE UNFINISHED LETTER .... 283 XIII. BAB HAS THE LAST WORD . . . . BABBAEA HEATHCOTE'S TEIAL.

Chapter I. The Warp And The Wooe

' ' Weakness to be wroth with weakness ! woman's pleasure, woman's pain — Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain : Woman is the lesser man, "and all thy passions, match'd with mine, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine." Tennyson's LocJcsley Hall. And here I must linger a moment. There are pauses in life, why not in fiction ? If you have come with me so far, have patience while I take breath a little ; here are ascents, fresh difficulties, new complications, a stmubling block or two; we should sit clown a while to collect our forces, and then forward to the end. It has seemed to me as though, in this narrative, I have been as one who has loitered along a sunny high-road, where there are trees and hedgerows, and VOL. III. B TKIAL. 2 plenty of pleasant shade; there is a broad low level everywhere, there are bye-ways, soft glades, trickles of water out of hidden runlets, here and there a grating pebble, a little rough place perhaps, and thorns and flowers everywhere.

We have been gathering flowers — a briar rose or two, honeysuckle, a spray of eglantine, now a tall foxglove or a scarlet poppy, by-and-by there will be trails of blue convolvuli, tied all together with green ears of corn; the flowers are homely, the colors not well blended, some are already wither ing; a poor thing after all, a hedgerow nosegay, a few bright-colored weeds, but my own. I have gathered them with pain and trouble, they are dear to me. The sun has been very bright, there has been a play of shadows, now it is a little overcast, there is a ground mist rising, the road grows rugged, it is broken up, sterile, a little barren; here is a steep ascent, rough hewn stones, more and more difficulties. The mountain tops are still gilded with sunshine, we shall have a fine evening, you say ; let us throw away our flowers, they are full of thorns, as you see, and now let us pick our way among those granite boulders, and so on to that steep defile which looks so dark and dolorous in the distance ; there are stumbling blocks, but you must trust me a little.

I think I can promise that every step shall lead us nearer the end. If you have journeyed with me so far — ah, and are y-ou not tired of y-our companion ? — you will know how dear Barbara is to me ; do you wonder at it, do you find fault with her, does she weary you ? That is because you do not know her as I do. To you she may be only a fictitious shadow, among other shadows ; to me she is living, she is reality. If I have created her, I do not know it ; she may be but a little bright-colored weed that I have gathered by the roadside, and warmed in my bosom — a poor thing, but my own, my very own. And so I have taken her into my heart. She is so faulty you say — ah, but so lovable ; she is uncertain, as full of fancies as a nut of meat; discontented — well, so she is ; ungrateful and apt to fight with shadows, but then she is Barbara ; she is not specially lamb like, not one of your soft impressionable women, not even beautiful — I think I rejoice at that; but as I have called her before, my healthy moorland breeze, sweet as wholesome, and strong as sweet, and cheer ing as new wine.

And two men had found out the briar rose, and loved her, prickles and all ; one has stooped to pluck her, and withdrawn his hand sorely wounded, and the other — well, what will you ? two cannot wear her, and she loves whom she loves — hence the complication. Two men, both generous, one strong, and Barbara brimming over with truth, and all the dull b tide of circumstance setting dead against her, and she as true as the needle to its magnet, and invisible hands parting them. At odds, ah, miserably at odds. And the how, and the wherefore, and the pros and the cons, we have yet to learn, and if one whom you respect does wrong or wanders from the level way, misguided, do not blame me, for the passions blind men, and we are all human, and even the most erect gets a fall sometimes. But Nigel, I am full of pity for him.

He was not very strong, neither physically nor morally, but he had all the makings of a good man about him. Life had been rather against him ; with a sensitive temperament, almost feminine in its delicate organisation, and keenly alive to all forms of sufferings, he had had to struggle through some of his best years with the burden of a sicklybody and irritable nerves, which he had borne with every conceivable impatience, and all the rebellion of a haughty spirit. All his resources were in his art, and in inter course with kindred minds ; he became cynical, fastidious, and sentimental in a breath ; he com menced pictures, philosophised, and tried to blend the stoic and epicurean together, and failing that, he indulged himself in the two love dreams of his life, from which he awoke soured in mind and heart, to find that mere beauty could not content him, and with the chivalrous desire strong upon him to wage ■war with womankind ever after.

This feeling was strong upon him when Barbara met him ; he had thought her a child, and treated her brusquely ; afterwards he found he could not forget her, through the restless night that followed his accident, he could not get her out of his head, she haunted his dreams ; by-and-by he found the little Samaritan was the central figure in his Use picture. He had sketched her over and over again as she had first appeared to him, sketches full of strong nervous power, and had hidden them away in his secret drawers ; he would never forget that evening — never ! The setting sun, the dark line of firs, the young bracken, the horrible sick pain, the loneliness, the terror of the starting blood ; then the little demure figure in grey, with low ripples of brown hair half hiding her forehead, and great startled eyes; the timid womanly advances, the childlike awkwardness, the frightened sweetness of her voice, and the soft ness of the little hands that guided him : she had made him lean on her shoulder, and he had looked down on her, his small slender prop, and wondered as he did so whether she were some little Sister of the Poor, a stray novice perhaps, new to her duties, so very sober was her garb and look, and when he found out his mistake, the quaintness of her aspect amused him, and after that there was nothing but faintness and pain.

But he hankered after her strangely in his illness, though he chose to be a little difficult, and remain upstairs long after his due time ; he began to listen for her footsteps, the only loud ones about the house ; he knew the decided little tapping of her heels along the passages, as well as he knew the sweep and " silking " of his mother's dress ; he would brighten up and smile at her clear whistling, or the chirruping voice in which she called " Ben." Often he watched her playing odd pranks with him in the garden, trying to make him perform a raise a deux temps with her, on his hind legs, much to Ben's disgust ; he would move his legs stiffly round about a few times, nibbling and licking his bushy paws all the time like a bear, and then he would feign a growl, and refuse to stir, and Barbara would finish her dance a la Den'ise, getting faster and faster ; and then there would be hide and seek between the trees, and touch last, and all manner of childish games ; and then all at once she would come down the lawn, her quicksilver gone, walking quietly with her hands behind her, and her face as grave as a judge.

She did not look prettythen, she had a way of puckering up her forehead, and drawing down the corners of her mouth, and her hair looked too heavy for her head, and was often rough and unkempt ; then Nigel would note all her defects with his fastidious eye; "there is no need for Samaritans to be handsome, I suppose," he would say ; " this Samaritan of mine is the greatest oddity I have ever seen ! " but he was always disappointed, notwithstanding, when the oddity went in. And then he came downstairs and saw her in one of her sunny moods, in the midst of flowers and sunshine, making up a very pretty color picture — when she sat and chirped at him like a little bird, and then he began to take interest in her in earnest, all the more that he found her freshness did not pall upon him, and that her originality was striking.

By-and by he discovered that Barbara had the happy knack of charming away his fretful humors — that she gave him his way, and had her own at the same time ; if she were cross to others, she was never so to him, and that pleased his masculine vanity ; he was never dull, never ennuye when she was by. Hester's beauty was ponderous, her gentleness inane, after Barbara ; this little fresh piece of Use was to him the most charming compound of frank ness and innocence, eked out with perfect honesty, that he had ever seen ; presently, because she was the soul of truth and never disappointed him, he grew to love her. She had been his pupil for some time then, and they had been thrown into daily, hourly intercourse, and you know how dangerous that is to a man so susceptible as Nigel; from the couch, where he had ruled and tyrannised over the women folk of Dr. Heathcote's household, he suddenly held out the sceptre of his power to this small insignificant Bar bara — this Barbara so humble in her own estima tion that she had prejudged herself that she should find favor in no man's eyes — and lo, this lordly young Ahasuerus, beautiful with a man's beauty, had stooped to her and loved her with his whole heart.

",You are just the dearest thiDg in the world to me," he had said to her in that generous offer of his, and how had the full knowledge of that fact stunned her ! Well, it was strange — but, dear friends, how often am I to repeat that life is strange and full of the oddest contradictions, — life, not only fiction, remember. Which are the women whom you know in your daily walk to be the best loved by men, and who exercise over them the greatest influence ? Is it the ball-room belle, the reigning beauty of the season, the fair-haired idol of a crowd ? — you know it is not. There was an old saying, I remember, in my childhood, " Tall women are admired, and little ones beloved ; " there was a homely truth disguised there amid much quaintness ; if I were to improvise another I could often say with real honesty, " that handsome women are admired and plain ones beloved," for one sees it over and over again.

Why do so many happy matches seem such terrible misfits in the eyes of the world ? " What could have made him choose her ? How could he have thrown himself away upon that woman?" — how often we hear that said with the shrug and elevated eyebrow of polite incredulity. How often ! — why, have we not said it ourselves ? I remember, some time ago, hearing a great deal about one who seemed to exercise un limited fascination over the men by whom she was surrounded; she was a consummate flirt, but a good woman too, and she won certainly the most devoted love. When I saw her, I could not conceal my astonishment. I saw before me a woman not even young, plain, without the slightest claims to good looks, or a single feature that could entitle her to admiration; it was a face that would hardly have been noticed in a room, and her manners were singular, prononce, almost affected, and yet I knew of a certainty how many had found her fascinating ; what an enigma, I thought; and yet, are there not often such enigmas to be found ?

And so it was with Nigel and Barbara ; it was less to be surprised at that Dr. Strath should love her, seeing that he was not given to lay much stress on personal beauty, but that Nigel, with his fastidious tastes, his artist's eye, should fix on this insignificant girl, should pour out upon her all the wealth of his passionate love, only to be repulsed, was a thing indeed to excite wonder. Was his clear sight deceived, were Barbara's faults beauties in his eyes, could he overlook her want of sty-le, her lack of dignity, that he should take her into his heart of hearts, that he should love her as he never loved fair haired Gretchen, or Maria, as he would never love any other woman till the hour of his death ? I don't know — how can I ? I can only say that such was the fact. And now that he had been so re jected, would he give her up ?

Ah, you do not know Nigel Strath. This love was driving him mad with the desire of possession, he had never known rest or comfort since he had found out what she was to him — it was wearing him terribly, health and spirits alike ; he had wooed her in every way that he could, but she was not to be won; she had laughed away his honest speeches, his open professions of love had fallen meaninglessly on her ear — either she would not, or she could not attach sober truth to them ; she had grown into shy startled ways with him — in her trouble she had held herself completely aloof from his sympathy; and now when galled by her seeming indifference, and unable to bear any longer the suspense and misery of his love, he had dared his all on the single throw of the lover, she had shrunk away from him with such undisguised pain and terror, with such honest negatives on her lips, and such sorrowful firmness in every line of her face, as to suggest no hope to him, no single chance of success.

She did not love him, he saw that clearly, but would he give her up for that ? Never ! As is the case with some impulsive natures, the very resistance to his wish added fuel to his flame, and even while borne down by despair and sharp physical pain he yet registered a sort of vow in his heart that, willingly or unwillingly, she should be his. " I will move heaven and earth to win you," he had said to her, and his words had filled her with a chill presentiment of some coming trouble. "And one day I will win you, Barbara," and then as she left him he called out after her yet more loudly, "my Barbara." She had never feared him before as she did then, as she went through the lanes stunned and trembling and almost sobbing with pain ; she recalled, with a feeling akin to terror, the hungry brilliant eyes, the thin face, the lips blue with some internal agony, the sharp passion of his voice as he pleaded with her, the almost unearthly beauty of his whole face, and as she remembered it her trouble was very great — all the more that she had grown to love him with the same tender, gay, and half-protecting love which she felt for Leigh.

But Leigh had deceived her fond idolatry — and St. Bonans was become her lover and frightened her — and so there was no rest for Barbara till that sudden light broke upon her and showed her the truth writ up in dazzling letters of gold, and after that she forgot her trouble and was no more afraid, and though she would mourn for her poor St. Bonans with the constancy of a faithful heart, yet for the time being her joy was very great when she first woke to her full life, and basked in the sunshine of her love. And that night, when Barbara repeated her prayers, she said " Thank God for the truth," and once again, "poor, poor St. Ronans," and then she slept the happy sleep of youth. And so Barbara took her first sip of the chalice of life. By-and-by she may say the draught is bitter as she drinks deeper, but I do not think she will ever quite forget the sweetness of that first taste.

But what has become of Dr. Strath all this time ? I feel a few words are necessary to redeem him from any charge of inconsistency or undue procrasti nation ; he has been walking, all these years, in a steep uphill road of his own devising, and not being gifted with second sight, or able to prognosticate an ominous future, he has tried no short cuts to the goal of his desire — preferring to work on patiently, doing the duty that lay before him, and trusting almost with childlike faith for what the coming time might yield him. Seldom was such stern integrity and such rigid self-denial to be seen in a man so young as Norman Strath. Not that his youth was very apparent either to himself and others, and few would have believed that Dr. Strath had in reality only attained his thirtieth year, but hardship and mental labor had told their tale on him, and a toilsome youth had settled down into premature middle-age.

How he had struggled and worked no one but himself knew, any more than they did how he had washed his hands in innocency, and kept the thing that was right from his youth ; few men if they had had to write out the account of their past life, their young life, would have written out such a pure record as Norman Strath's, albeit he was mixed up so early with the world of school and the world of life, cast upon the crowd as it were, as utterly friendless and forlorn as any lad could be who had but one human being belonging to him, and that his mother. " He was the only son of his mother, and she was a widow : " it was verily those words which I have used before, that kept him from straying out of that narrow rugged track — the knowledge that he was her all, that she depended upon him, that in her loneliness she was thinking of and praying for him ; and though, from the strange circumstances of his life, those circumstances which Mrs. Strath had so mournfully narrated to Barbara, she was more a stranger to him than most mothers are to their sons — yet he soon began to regard her with that chivalrous devotion with which young manhood must always endow some woman — and when they came together he already found himself disposed to love her with his whole heart.

Not that his love ever became demonstrative. Norman was never demonstrative to anyone, he was always a little reserved in his affections — apt to wax curt and hostile in a breath, even to those he liked best. His mother and he lived on the pleasantest and most amicable fooling; he was loath to lose her presence even for a day, and submitted willingly to all her soft tyrannies for his comfort, and yet, though she never confessed it, she was often disappointed and chilled by his persistent reticence, and his want of freedom of speaking on all that concerned himself. It seemed as though, not even to his mother — that tender woman who shared his life, could he break down that barrier which hid his truer self; and so it had come to pass that, upright and self-denying as he was, he was almost a stranger to the one who knew him best, and dearly as she loved him, this was a great grief to her.

Even concerning that morbid remorse of his about his cousin, she knew little or nothing. I think if he had ever got his pain into words, and told her, her shrewd matter-of-fact sense would have proved to him his error ; the whole thing was so dim and shadowy that the very bringing it forth into the light of day would have caused it to wither and dwarf to its true dimensions ; he would have absolved himself from his boyish vow, he would have learnt to smile at it long ago, but now the very mystery and darkness in which he kept it had fostered the evil thing — it was a mon'ster of his own devising — one day it might master him. It was the one plague-spot in his otherwise healthy vitality — his strong, rigid nature had conceived the un wholesome idea, and it engendered a form of morbid suffering that was surprising.

He was beginning to think his proud denial was mistaken, and that he had wittingly and knowingly given that fatal push. I am rather of opinion that this was the truth, that it was the unconscious temptation of a moment, of which he was scarcely sensible himself. But whether or not that was the case, still he stood self convicted of anger and fierce wrestling, and the tyranny of the strong over the weak, and the author of all the untoward circumstances that led to that unlucky accident, which brought out all the inherent delicacy of Nigel's constitution, and made him the restless, discontented being he really was. Norman's clear sight read all the faults of Nigel's true nature, he owned he was haughty, captious and domineering, prone to much selfishness and exagger ation of feeling, but not the less did he love and yearn over him in his heart, and long to see him beloved and useful in his generation, and employing his great talents and opportunities to the good of his fellow creatures in a wider and deeper sense.

He mourned sincerely over the indolence that was partly constitutional, and partly acquired ; it seemed a grievous thing to him, to see a man of Nigel's culture spending the best years of his life in aimless travel, and still more aimless repose, neither working at his art nor ambitious of success, sheltering him self from any labor, however noble, on the plea of the hypochondriac, and only adding to his real disease by the uncurbed violence of his passions, and the diversity of his many fancies. And yet in spite of all, he knew him to be gentle at heart, and honest and generous to a fault; he could be mag nanimous and rouse himself on occasions, and over and over again Norman had owned to himself that he had never known a man more truly lovable than Nigel Strath; in other hands, and under other cir cumstances, if he were compelled to labor for his sustenance, for example, or to take care of one younger and weaker than himself, he could imagine him casting off the shell of old habits, and be coming a nobler and stronger man than he was ever likely now to become.

This restless discontent became a daily and hourly anxiety to Norman ; he saw that some hidden trouble was wearing him, and he began to long for his happiness and restoration to health, and so he set himself seriously to task, to find out and minister to this mental disease as he called it. For he was as ignorant of the real cause as he could possibly be. And yet he loved Barbara, oh ! how he loved her ! He had had one or two fits of jealousy when Barbara accepted the necklace on her birthday for example, but theywere merely temporary feelings of uneasiness, and passed away as soon as he brought them to the test of reason ; naturally un suspicious, he never really supposed he had any grave cause to fear a rival in Nigel. That he should want his Barbara, his plain, homely Barbara, would have seemed a thing incredible to him; and it was only some sudden presentiment, bred of his great love, perhaps, that drew from him those few words, " Be faithful to me, Barbara, little Barbara, be faith ful to me."

It was as though his passion broke VOL. III. c bounds for a moment, and he was compelled to speak, though only vaguely, and in a sense that might be mistaken. It seems strange that he had never betrayed himself all this time, that he had kept this sweet secret of his locked up in his own heart, so that not even the woman he loved guessed at it ; but a hard life had taught Norman patience and prudence, and there was a reason for his reserve. He was a very poor man when he came to Sun ningford as the doctor's assistant, and there seemed little hope then that he would be able to maintain a wife for many a long year to come. To defray the cost of his education his mother had had to sell out part of her little annuity, and that, and the result of his poor earnings kept them very straitly for some time, and not even Barbara, who was most at Oakleigh Cottage, guessed the shifts to which their narrow means reduced them, or how hard it was to keep up the appearance that Sunningford demanded.

By-and-by they got on better ; Norman did literary work, they began to add to their com forts, then to save, then Norman, elated at the prospect of the small partnership soon to be offered him out of consideration of his professional talent, induced his mother to buy those shares of Dr. Heathcote, which were to enable him to pay his son's heavy college debts. Mrs. Strath, deeply reluctant and yet unable to refuse her son anything, drew out the last of her annuity and placed it in his hands. Norman, intoxicated with the success of his specula tion, which was already repaying him far beyond his wildest hopes, still insisted on maintaining their narrow way of life, and spent his professional earnings in buying fresh shares. Dr. Heathcote was doing the same, only more largely. Norman had hopes now that his goal was in view, in a little while — a very little while — he thought he should be able to keep a wife with comfort — he was beginning to throw off his reserve with Barbara and show her somewhat of his heart ; in his quiet un demonstrative way he was slowly but surely winning her ; on the day before her birthday he had made up his mind to speak at once to Dr. Heathcote.

You know what happened ; with the doctor's illness came a grave delay, by-and-by other clouds gathered on Norman's horizon ; he was aware of them before, and had treated them lightly, presently he found out they were ominous enough. A new doctor had appeared in Durnford, that was nothing particularly to be wondered at, other wan dering doctors had come before, but had never stayed long, so great was the reliance of Durnford on Dr. Heathcote. But this Mr. Murray had no sooner appeared than a clique formed round him, and two or three of Dr. Heathcote's oldest patients were to be found c among them; it did not surprise him, however, that old Mrs. Howden should pay court to the new comer, and accept meekly such pills and potions as he chose to send her, for Mrs. Howden was given to change her doctor on the slightest pretext; but that Mrs. Bupert, and the two Miss MacArthurs, who had modest lodgings over the baker's, and Grundel the butcher, who was quite an authority in the village, — that these should throw off their allegiance, and openly declare for the new doctor, was a perplexity even for Norman's astute mind, he could not understand it at all.