Barbara's history : a novel

Front matter

UC-NRLF,

■III

BARBARA'S HISTORY.

Chapter I. Early Records

Beranger.

Sometimes, in the suburban districts of London, we chance upon a quaint old house that was, evidently, a country-house some hundred years ago ; but which has been overtaken by the town, and stands perplexed amid a neighborhood of new streets, like a rustic at Charing Cross. There are plenty such. We have seen them in our walks, many a time and oft. They look sad and strange. The shadows gather round them more darkly than On their neighbors. The sunlight seems to pass them by ; and we fancy their very walls might speak, and tell us tales. In just»such a house, and such a suburb, I was born.

Overgrown for the most part with a mantle of dark ivy, inclosed in a narrow garden that sloped down to a canal at the back, and shut sullenly away from the road by some three or four dusky elm-trees and a low wall, our home looked dreary and Solitary enough — all the more dreary and solitary for the prim terraces and squares by which it was on all sides surrounded. Within, however, it was more cheerful ; or custoni made it seem so. From the upper windows we saw the Hampstead hills. In the summer our garden was covered with grass, and the lilac bushes blossomed where they leaned toward the canal. Even the shapeless coal-barges that labored slowly past all the day long had something picturesque and pleasant about them. Besides, no place can be wholly dull where children's feet patter incessantly up and down the stairs, and children's voices ring merrily along the upper floors.

It was a large old house — thrice too large for any use of ours — and we had it all to ourselves. Most of the top rooms were bare ; and I well remember what famous play-grounds they made by day, and how we dreaded to pass near them after dark. Up there, even when my father was at home, we might be as noisy as we pleased. It was our especial territory ; and, excepting once a year, when the great cleaning campaign was in progress, no one disputed our prerogative. We were left, indeed, only too much to our own wayward impulses, and grew wildly, like weeds by the wayside.

We were three — Hilda, Jessie, and Barbara. I am Barbara ; and the day that gave me life left us all motherless. Our father had not married again. His wife was the one love of his existence, and it seemed, when she was gone, as if the very power of loving were taken from him. Thus it happened that from our first infancy we were left to the sole care of one faith- ■ ful woman-servant, who spoiled us to her heart's content, and believed that we, like the king, could do no wrong. We call her Goody ; but her name M^as Sarah Beever. We tyrannized over her, of course ; and she loved us the more for our tyranny. After all, hers was the only affection we had, and, judicious or injudicious, we should have been poor indeed without it.

Our father's name was Edmund Churchill. He came of a good family ; had received a collegiate education ; and, it was said, had squandered a considerable fortune in his youth. When nearly arrived at middle life, he married. My mother was not rich — I never even heard that she was beautiful ; but he loved her, and, while she lived, endeavored, after his own fashion, to make her happy. Too far advanced in years to apply himself to a profession, had even the inclination for work not been \vanting, he found himself a hopeless and aimless man. He could not even console himself, like some fathers, in the society and education of his children, for he was not naturally fond of children ; and now all the domestic virtues were gone out of him. Wrecked, stupefied, careless alike of the present and the future, he moped away a few dull months, and then, as was natural, returned to the world. He fell in with some of his former friends, now, like himself, grown staid with years ; entered a club ; took to dinner-parties, politics, and whist ; became somewhat of a bonvivant ; and, at forty-four, adopted all the small and selfish vices of age. At the time of which I write, he was still handsome, though somewhat stout and florid for his years. He dressed with scrupulous neatness ; was particularly careful of his health ; and prided himself upon the symmetry of his hands and feet.

His manners, in general, were courteous and cold ; yet, in society, he was popular. He possessed, in an eminent degree, the art of pleasing ; and I do not remember the day on which he dined at home. Yet, for all this, he was a proud man at heart, and dearly cherished every circumstance that bore upon his name and lineage. An observer might have detected this by only glancing round the walls of our dusky dining-room, and inspecting the contents of the great old carved bookcase between the windows. Here might be seen a " History of ye Noble and Ancient Houses of Devon," with that page

BARBARA'S HISTORY.

turned down wherein it treated of the Churchills of Ash. Here a copy of that scarce and dreary folio entitled " Divi Britannici," written and published by Sir Winston Churchill in 1675. Several works on the wars of Queen Anne ; five or six different lives of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough ; the Duchess of Marlborough's " Private Correspondence ;" Chesterfield's Letters ; Mrs. Manley's " Atalantis ;" the " Memoirs of the Count de Grammont;" various old editions of PhiUps's " Blenheim," and Addison's " Campaign ;" the poetical works of Charles Churchill of Westminster ; and twenty volumes of the " London Gazette," (said to be of considerable value, and dating from the year 1*700 to 1715,) filled all the upper shelves, and furnished my father with the only reading in which he ever indulged at home. Nor was this all. A portrait of the brilliant hero, when Lord Churchill, and some fine old engravings of the battles of Ramillies, Oudenarde, and Malplaquet, were suspended over the chimney-piece and side-board. A large colored print of Blenheim House hung outside in the hall.

But far more impressive than any of these — far more dignified and awful in our childish eyes, was a painting which occupied the place of honor in our best parlor. This work of art purported to be the portrait of a second cousin of my father's, one Agamemnon Churchill by name, a high authority upon all matters connected with the noble science of heraldry, a Knight of the Bath, and one of his Majesty's most honorable heralds. Depicted here in all the glory of his official costume, and looking as like the knave of clubs as if he had just been shuffled out of a gigantic pack of cards, Sir Agamemnon Churchill beamed upon us from the environmentr of his gilded frame, and filled our little hearts with wonder and admiration. We humbly looked forward to the possibility of some day beholding our illustrious kinsman. We fancied that his rank could be only second to that of King William himself We even encouraged a secret belief that he might succeed to the throne at some remote time or other ; and agreed among ourselves that his first exercise of the royal prerogative would be to create our father Duke of Marlborough ; or, at the least. Commander in Chief and Lord Mayor of London.

It was but seldom, however, that we were allowed to contemplate the splendor of Sir Agamemnon and his glittering tabard ; for the best parlor had been a closed room ever since my mother's death, and was only thrown open now and then for cleaning purposes. But this very restriction ; this air of mourning and solitude ; the darkened windows ; the sheeted furniture ; the thick white dust that crept in month by month ; and, above all, the sense of a mysterious loss which we were all too young to comprehend, only served to invest the room and the picture with a still deeper interest. I well remember how often we interrupted our garden-games to peep, with suspended breath, through the chinks of the closed shutters, and how our voices sunk to a whisper when we passed the door.

I have said that we were three ; but I have not yet explained how nearly we were of one age, or how, being the youngest, I was only removed by three years from my eldest sister, Hilda, and by fourteen months from my second sister, Jessie. My father's httle girls had, indeed, sprung up quickly around him, and our mother was taken from us at the very time when we most needed her.

Jessie vras fair, and somewhat pretty; but Hilda was the beauty of the family, and our father's favorite. She was like him, but darker of complexion, and more delicately featured. She inherited the same pride ; was willful and imperious ; and exercised, withal, after her precocious fashion, the same power of ready fascination. Besides, she was very clever — much cleverer than Jessie or I — and learned with surprising facility. My sister Jessie was in many respects less forward than myself. She had neither Hilda's talent nor my steadiness, and was altogether deficient in ambition. To our eldest sister she was entirely devoted, submitting to all her caprices, and accepting all her opinions with a blind faith worthy of a better cause. This alliance was not favorable to my happiness. Hilda and Jessie were all in all to each other, and I found myself excluded from the confidence of both. Forgetting, or seeming to forget, how little our ages differed, they ti-eated me as a mere baby ; called me " little Barbara," and affected to undervalue whatever I said or did. When I tacitly rejected this mortifying patronage, and with it, a companionship which was only offered to me during a game of blindman's-buff, or puss-in-the corner, I was reproached for my indifference, or set aside as simply dull and tiresome.

To be just, I do not believe that my sisters had any idea of how they made me suffer. I was too proud to let them see it, and my grief may at times have worn a sullen aspect. Often and often have I stolen away to one of the great upper rooms, sobbing and lamenting,and wishing that my heart might break and put an end to my sorrows — and yet I kept my secret so bravely that it was not even suspected by the dear old servant whom I loved and trusted above all the world.

The grievances of inf^ancy lie mostly on the surface. Time heals them, and they jeave no scar. But this was not my case. I was more sensitive than the generality of children, and, I believe, more affectionate. I could have loved my sisters with my whole heart ; but they rejected me, and so the estrangement, which at first might have been healed by a word, Avidened with years and became at last almost irreparable. By the time that I had reached the age of nine or ten, I was no longer a child. My freshness of feeling was gone — my heart was chilled — my first impulses were checked and driven back. The solitude which was once my refuge became my habit; and, grown indifferent to opinion, I heard myself called " strange and unsociable" without emotion. I appropriated one of the garrets to my special use, and, being left in undisturbed possession, lived there among occupations and amusements of my own creation. Thus it happened that, unless during the hours of meals or tuition, I lived almost entirely alone. My father knew nothing of this ; for he was always out, and troubled himself very little about our domestic managements. Goody knew and wondered, but loved me too well to

BARBARA'S ' HISTORY.

interfere with any thing I chose to do ; and my sisters, after teasing and laughing at me to their hearts' content, at last grew weary, and abandoned me to my own solitary ways.

It was a sad life for a child, and might have led to many evils, but for a circumstance which I must ever regard as something more than mere good fortune.

Having wandered up-stairs one day with nothing to read and nothing to think of, and being, moreover, very listless and weary, I bethought myself of a pile of old boxes which lay stored together in a certain dark closet close at hand, and so set to work to turn out their contents. Most of them were empty, or contained only coils of rotten rope, pieces of faded stuffs and damasks, and bundles of accounts. But in one, the smallest and least promising of all, I found a dusty treasure. This treasure counted of • some three or four dozen worm-eaten, faded volumes, tied up in lots of four or six, and overlaid with blotches of white mold. A motley company ! Fox's " Martyrs ;" the Works of Dr. Donne ; Sir Thomas Browne on " Urn Burial;" a Translation of Pliny, with Blustrations ; Defoe's "History of the Plague;" Riccoboni on the Theaters of Europe; "Hudibras ;" Waller's Poems ; Bolingbroke's " Letters on English History ;" the Tatler, Guardian, and Spectator ; Drelincourt on Death, with the History of Mrs. Veal ; an odd volume or two of the Gentleman's Magazine, and some few others, chiefly farming books and sermons. It was a quaint library for so young a reader, but a most welcome one. I necessarily met with much that I could not understand, and yet contrived to reap pleasure and profit from ail. I had boundless faith to begin with, and believed, like the Arabs, that every thing printed must be true. I was puzzled by Sir Hudibras, but never doubted either his courage or identity. I was interested by the letters in the Tatler, and only wondered that so many ladies and gentlemen should have ventured to trouble that nice good-natured Mr. Bickerstaff with their unimportant private affairs. As for Edmund Waller, Esquire, I was quite sorry for his distresses ; and could not conceive how the beautiful Sacharissa could bear to be told that she had " a wild and cruel soul" without relenting immediately. To me, happy in my credulity, the Phoenix and Mrs. Veal were alike genuine phenomena; and had Sir Agamemnon Churchill himself attempted to convince me that the History of the Plague was written by any other than " a citizen who lived the whole time in London," I should have made bold to reserve my own opinion on the subject.

Other books I had as well — books better suited to my age and capacity ; but these, being common property, were kept in the school-room, and consisted for the most part in moral tales and travels, which, read more than once, grow stale and wearisome.

Fortunate was it that I found this second life in my books ; for I was a very lonely little girl, with a heart full of unbostowed affection, and a nature quickly swayed to smiles or tears. The personages of my fictitious world became as real to me as those by whom I was surrounded in my daily life. They linked me with humanity. They were my friends, my instructors, my companions. I loved some, and hated others, as cordially as if they could love or hate me in return ; and, in the intensity of my sympathy with their airy sorrows and perplexities, learned to forget my own.

But I had still another happiness — a half-developed taste, which, fed by such scant nutriment as fell now and then in my way, ripened, year after year, to a deep and earnest passion, and influenced beyond all calculation the destinies of my later life. Art — art called the Divine, but known to me under its meanest and most barren form — fed the dreams of my childhood, and invested with an undeserved interest the few wretched prints scattered here and there through the pages of Fox's Martyrs. Goldsmith's Geography, and other works of the same " mark and likelihood." Sometimes, after my own imperfect fashion, I strove to reproduce them in pencil or charcoal. Sometimes, even, I attempted to illustrate the adventures of my favorite heroes, or the landscapes described in books of travel. The whitewashed walls of my garret, the covers and margins of my copybooks, and all the spare scraps of paper that I could find, were scrawled over with designs in which the love of beauty might, perhaps, have been discernible ; but- in which every rule of anatomy, perspective, and probability was hopelessly set at naught. But of this, more hereafter.

Happy art thou, 0 little child, to whom is granted the guidance of loving parents ! Happy, thrice happy, in the fond encouragements, the gentle reproofs, the tender confidences and consolations lavished on thy first uncertain years ! I lost one of mine before my lips had ever been hallowed by her kisses ; and by the other I was, if not wholly unloved, at least too much neglected. How I yearned and wearied for those affections that I now could never have ; how I used to steal to dear old Goody's knees in the dim twilight, and beseech her to tell me something of my mother ; how I listened with tears that I was ashamed to show, and stole away to hide them ; how, thinking over all these things, I sometimes gave way to fits of bitterness and anger, and sometimes sobbed myself to sleep, with my head resting on a book, matters little now, and except as it may throw a light on certain passages of my inner life, is scarcely deserving of mention. Alas ! I have yet much more to tell. The long story of my workings and wanderings lies all before me like a summer landscape, with its lights and shadows, its toilsome plains, and its places of green rest, mapped out, and fading away together in the blue distance.

Here, at all events, let me end my first day's record ; for I am weary, and these pictures of the past lie heavily at my heart.

Chapter II. Deportment And Discipline

My father's bell rang sharply.

It was about eleven o'clock on a brilliant May morning. Miss Whymper, who attcnded'to our education between the hours of nine and twelve daily, presided at the head of the table, correcting French exercises. We, respectfully withdrawn to the foot of the same, bent busily over our books and slates, and preserved a decorous

BARBARA'S HISTORY.

silence. We all heard our father close his bedroom door and go down-stairs ; but it was his habit to rise and breakfast late, and we took no notice of it. We also heard him ring ; but we took no notice of that either. Scarcely, however, had the echo of the first bell died away, when it was succeeded by a second, and the second was still pealing when he opened the parlor door, and called aloud.

" Beever 1" said he, impatiently. " Beever ! am I to ring for an hour ?"

The reply was inaudible ; but he spoke again, almost without waiting to hear it.

" When did this letter arrive ? Was it here last night when I came home, or was it delivered only this morning ? Why didn't you bring ' it up to me with the shaving water ? Where is Barbara?" "

Startled at the sound of my own name, I rose in my place, and waited with suspended breath. My sisters, with their heads still bent low, glanced first at me and then at each other.

" Be so good, Miss Barbara, as to concentrate your attention upon your studies," said Miss Whymper, without even raising her eyes from the exercises.

"I — I — that is, papa — I heard "

" Be so good as to hear nothing duinng the hours of education," interposed Miss Whymper, still frostily intent upon the page before her.

" But papa calls me, and "

" In that case you will be sent for. We will proceed, if you please, young ladies, to the analyzation of the Idiom."

We pushed our slates away, took each our French grammar, and prepared to listen.

"The Idiom," said Miss Whymper, sitting stiffly upright, and, as was her wont, cadencing her voice to one low monotonous level, " is a familiar and arbitrary turn of words, which, without being in strict accordance with the received laws of "

" Barbara ! Barbara, come here. Tell Miss Whymper I want you !"

I started up again, and Miss Whymper, interrupted in her discourse, frowned, inclined her head the very least in the world, and said :

" You have my permission, Miss Barbara, to retire,"

I was always nervous in my father's presence ; but the suddenness and strangeness of the summons made me this morning more than usually timid. I ran down, however, and presented myself, tremblingly, at the door of the breakfast-parlor. He was pacing to and fro, between the table and the window. His coffee stood untasted in the cup. In his hand he crushed an open letter. Seeing me at the door, he stopped, flung himself into his easy chair, and beckoned me to co*e nearer.

" Stand there, Barbara," said he, pointing to a particular square in the pattern of the carpet.

Shaking from head to foot, I came forward and stood there, waiting, like a criminal for his sentence.

" Humph ! Can't you look up ?"

I looked up ; looked down again ; turned red and white alternately ; and felt as if the ground were slipping from under my feet.

My father uttered an exclamation of impatience.

" Good heavens !" said he, pettishly. " What gaucherie I Are you taught to hold yourself no better than that ? Are your arms pump-handles ? What stranger would imagine — well, well, it can't be helped now 1 Tell me — did you ever . hear of your great-aunt, who lives in Suffolk?"

" Heard of Mrs. Sandyshaft !" exclaimed Goody, who had been standing by the door, twirling her apron with both hands all the time. " I should think so indeed ! Often and often ; and of Stoneycroft Hall, too — haven't vou, mv lamb?" ^ ' ^

Too confused to speak, I nodded; and my father went on,

" I have had a letter from your great-aunt this morning,' Barbara, Here it is. She asks me to send you down to Suffolk ; and, as it may be greatly for your good, I shall allow you to go. Though at a great inconvenience to myself, remember. At a great inconvenience to myself." '

Uncertain what to reply, I looked down, and stammered :

" Yes, papa."

" I have not seen Mrs. Sandyshaft for many years," continued my father. " In fact, we — we have not been friends. But she may take a liking for you, Barbara— and she is rich. You must try to please her. You will go this day week, if -Beever can get you ready in tlie time. What do you say, Beever ?"

" Less than a week will do for me, sir," said Goody, promptly.

" No, no ; a week is soon enough. And, Beever, you are not to spare for a pound or two. I must have her look like a gentleman's child, anyhow. Not but that it is excessively inconvenient to me, just now. Excessively inconvenient !"

He paused, musingly, and then, leaning his chin upon his hand, looked at me again, and sighed. The sight, I suppose, was unsatisfactory enough ; for the longer he looked, the more his countenance darkened. Suddenly he rose, pushed his chair away, and planted himself in the middle of the heartR-rug with his back to the fire.

" My compliments to Miss Whymper, Beever, and I request the favor of a moment's conversation."

Beever departed on her errand. After a few seconds of uneasy silence, during which I never ventured to stir from that particular square upon the carpet. Miss Whymper caftie.

My father bowed profoundly. Miss Whymper courtesied to the ground. I always noticed that ^ they wei'e amazingly polite to each other.

" Madam," said my father with his grandest air, and in his blandest accents, " unwilling as I am to trespass on your valuable time, I have ventured to interrupt you this morning in order

to consult you upon Barbara, place a chair

for Miss Whymper."

Miss Whymper courtesied again, laid her head a little on one side, like a raven, and folded her hands together, as if she were expressing the letter M in the manual alphabet.

" I propose, madam," pursued my father, "to send Barbara on a visit to a relation — a rich and somewhat eccentric relation — who resides in the country, and with whom we have not held communication for many years. It is important, for several reasons, Miss Whymper, that the child should make a favorable impression ; and

BARBARA'S HISTORY.

I feel sure that I shall not vainly entreat your cooperation during the few days that intervene between the present time and the period of her departure."

"With regard to any thing that /can do," murmured Miss Whymper, patting her hands softly together, as if she were applauding, " Mr. Churchill may at all times command me."

My father glanced at Miss Whymper's hands, which were somewhat red and bony, and at his own, which were particularly white and well shaped ; and so, trifling carelessly with his watch-chain, continued.

" I am aware, of course," said he, " that much can not be done in so short a time ; but that something may, I am induced to hope, knowing — ahem ! — the talent and judgment to which I confide the task."

Miss Whymper smiled the iciest of smiles, and acknoNvledged the tribute by another bow, which my father returned immediately.

" You observe, no doubt, Miss Whymper," he continued, " that Barbara's carriage is essentially ungraceful. She never knows what to do with her feet. Her hands do not seem to belong to her. She enters a room badly. She has no self-possession, no style, no address — in short, there is nothing in her appearance which indicates either good blood or good breeding."

Whereupon my father glanced over his shoulder at th^ chimney-glass, and paused for a reply. Miss Whymper, perceiving that I had withdrawn behind her chair, as much out of sight as possible, shifted her position, and considered me attentively.

" It is quite true, sir," she sighed, after a few minutes of silence. " She is lamentably awkward ! And yet her sister Hilda "

" Ah ! if it had been Hilda !" exclaimed my father, regretfullv. " Why could she not have invited Hilda ?" *

" So quick, so naturally graceful, such rapid perception I" murmured Miss Whymper, still noiselessly applauding.

" The only one of the three who is like me !" added my father, with another glance at the glass.

" A truly aristocratic cast of features," returned Miss Whymper, " and the very child to please a stranger ! Well, well — we may do something with Miss Barbara, after all ; and, perhaps, by confining our attention for the present to that one object "

" Precisely so, Madam. That is what I wilh."

" And, if Mr. Churchill entertains no objection, by employing the aid of a few calisthenic exercises "

'' Just so, Miss Whymper. Just so."

" I do not doubt being enabled to effect some slight improvement."

" In which case, Madam, you will confer a favor upon me."

" And should any trifling outlay be required "

"You will charge whatever is necessary to my account."

*' A back-board, for instance, and a pair of dumb-bells?"

" I leave everything, Miss Whymper, to your experience and discretion."

The tone in which my father uttered these last words, and the bow by which they were accompanied, concluded the interview. Miss Whymper rose; he held the door open while she passed through ; more bows and courtesies were exchanged, and, when she was gone, he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously, and flung himself once more into the easy chair.

" Pshaw !" he muttered, " governesses and children — necessary evils ! Barbara, you may go back to your lessons, and tell Beever to bring fresh coffee."

The result of this conversation was to make my life unbearably wretched for the next seven days. I was taught to walk, to stand, to shake hands. I stood in the stocks, and wore the back-board, till I was ready to faint. I was placed before a looking-glass, and made to courtesy to my own reflection for the half hour together. I went through the first interview with my great-aunt twenty times a day ; my great-aunt being represented by a chair, and Miss Whymper standing by to conduct the performance. All this was very painful and perplexing, and, at the same time, very ludicrous. As for Hilda and Jessie, they allowed me no peace from morning till night; but, when our governess was out of the way, mimicked me with elaborate salutations, inquired perpetually after my health and that of my great-aunt, and humbly hoped that when I had inherited Stoneycroft Hall, and become a grand lady, I should not be too proud to take notice of my poor relations !