PAGE 25
Barbara Who Came Back
by
In the end Barbara did not go away. At the time Anthony was being instructed by a tutor who resided at the Hall to prepare him for the University and ultimately for the Army. Needless to say, she was employed continually in trying to compose the differences between him and this tutor. How then could she go away and leave that poor gentleman and her old mother, who when she was not staying with one of her other married daughters now made her home at the Hall?
Thus she argued to herself, but the truth was that she did not wish to go. Her dearest associations were in the churchyard yonder, the churchyard where she hoped ere long she would be laid. She hated life, she sought and craved for death. This was her sin.
Night by night she lay awake and thought of Anthony, her darling, her beloved. She remembered that dream of his about a home that awaited him in another world, and she loved to fancy him as dwelling in that place of peace and making ready for her coming.
Nobody thought of him now except herself and his old dog Nell. The dog thought of him, she was sure, for it would sleep beneath his empty bed, and at times sit up, look at it and whine. Then it would come and rest its head upon her as she slept, and she would wake to find it looking at her with a question in its eyes. One night in the darkness it did this, then left her and broke into a joyous whimpering, such as it used to make when its master was going to take it out. She even heard it jumping up as though to paw at him, and wondered dreamily what it could mean.
When she woke in the morning she saw the poor beast lying stiff and cold upon the bed that had been Anthony’s, and though she wept over it, her tears were perhaps those of envy rather than of sorrow, for she was sure that it had found Anthony.
More and more Barbara threw out her soul towards Anthony. Across the void of Nothingness she sent it travelling, nor did it return with empty hands. Something of Anthony had greeted it, though she could not remember the greeting, had spoken with it, though she could not interpret the words. Of this at least she was sure, she had been near to Anthony.
Once she seemed to see him. In the infinite, infinite distance, millions of miles away, the sky opened as it were. There in the opening was Anthony talking with one whom she knew for their daughter, the baby that had died, talking of her. In a minute they were gone, but she had seen them, she was sure that she had seen them, and the knowledge warmed her heart.
So there was no error, the Bible was true, more or less; Faith was not built on running water or on sand. Life was not a mere hellish mockery, where tiaras turned to crowns of thorn and joy was but an inch rule by which to measure the alps of human pain. Life was a door, a gateway. The door dreadful, the gate perilous, if you will, but beyond it lay no dream, no empty blackness. Beyond it stretched the Promised Land peopled with the lost who soon would be the found.
Barbara’s last illness was rapid. When she began to go she went swiftly.
“Can’t you save her?” asked her son of one of the doctors.
“The disease has gone too far,” he answered. “Moreover, it is impossible to save one who seeks to die.”
“Why does she seek to die?” blurted Anthony, glaring at him.
“Perhaps, young gentleman, you are in a better position to answer that question than I am,” replied the doctor, who knew of Anthony’s cruel conduct to his mother and had reproached him with it, not once but on several occasions.