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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.

CHAPTER VII

BARBARA’S SIN

The months following Anthony’s death were to Barbara as a bad dream. Like one in a dream she saw that open, wintry grave beneath the tall church tower about whose battlements the wind-blown rooks wheeled on their homeward way. She noted a little yellow aconite that had opened its bloom prematurely in the shadow of the wall, and the sight of it brought her some kind of comfort. He had loved aconites and planted many of them, though because of his winter absences years had gone by since he had seen one with his eyes, at any rate in England. That this flower among them all should bloom on that day and in that place seemed to her a message and a consolation, the only one that she could find.

His sad office over, her father accompanied her home, pouring into her ear the words of faith and hope that he was accustomed to use to those broken by bereavement, and with him came her mother. But soon she thanked them gently and bade them leave her to herself. Then they brought her son to her, thinking that the sight of him would thaw her heart. For a while the child was quiet and subdued, for there was that about his mother’s face which awed him. At last, weary of being still, he swung round on his heel after a fashion that he had, and said:

“Cook says that now father is dead I’m master here, and everyone will have to do what I tell them.”

Barbara lifted her head and looked at him, and something in her fawn-like eyes, a mute reproach, pierced to the boy’s heart. At any rate, he began to whimper and left the room.

There was little in the remark, which was such as a vulgar servant might well make thoughtlessly. Yet it brought home to Barbara the grim fact of her loss more completely perhaps than anything had done. Her beloved husband was dead, of no more account in the world than those who had passed from it at Eastwich a thousand years ago. He was dead, and soon would be forgotten by all save her, and she was alone; in her heart utterly alone.

The summer came and everyone grew cheerful. Aunt Thompson arrived at the Hall to stay, and urged Barbara to put away past things and resign herself to the will of Providence–as she had done in the case of the departed Samuel.

“After all,” she said, “it might have been worse. You might have been called upon to nurse an invalid for twenty years, and when at last he went, have found the best part of your life gone, as I did,” and she sighed heavily. “As it is, you still look quite a girl, having kept your figure so well; you are comfortably off and have a good position, and in short there is no knowing what may happen in the future. You must come up and stay with me this winter, dear, instead of poking yourself away in this damp old house, where everybody seems to die of consumption. Really it is a sort of family vault, and if you stop here long enough you will catch something too.”