Cruel Barbara Allen.

by David Christie Murray.

CHAPTER I.

Christopher was a fiddler and a man of genius. Educated people do not deny the possibility of such a combination; but it was Christopher's misfortune to live amongst a dull and bovine-seeming race, who had little sympathy with art and no knowledge of an artist's longings.

They contented themselves, for the most part, with the belief that Christopher was queer. Perhaps he was. My experience of men of genius, limited as it may be, points to the fact that oddity is a characteristic of the race. This observation is especially true of such of them as are yet unrecognised. They wear curious garments and their ways are strange.

The outward and visible signs of their inward and spiritual graces are familiar to most observers of life, and the aesthetic soul recognises the meaning of their adornments of the hair and their puttings on of apparel. Genius may be said in these cases to be a sort of mental measles exhibited in sartorial form, and it may be supposed that but for their breaking out there would be some fear of their proving fatal.

There are reasons for all things, if we could but find them; yet where is the social philosopher who will establish the nexus between a pa.s.sion for Beethoven and the love of a bad hat? Why should a man who has perceptions of the beautiful fear the barber's shears? There were no social philosophers to speak of in the little country town in which Christopher was born and bred, and n.o.body in his case strove to solve these problems. Christopher was established as queer, and his townsfolk were disposed to let him rest at that. His pale face was remarkable for nothing except a pair of dreamy eyes which could at times give sign of inward lightnings. His hair was lank; his figure was attenuated and ungraceful; he wore his clothes awkwardly. He was commonly supposed to be sulky, and some people thought his tone of voice b.u.mptious and insolent. He was far from being a favourite, but those who knew him best liked him best, which is a good sign about a man. Everybody was compelled to admit that he was a well-conducted young man enough, and on Sundays he played the harmonium gratis at the little Independent chapel in which that pious and simple pair, his father and mother, had worshipped till their last illness. Over this instrument Christopher--let me admit it--made wonderful eyes, sweeping the ceiling with a glance of rapture, and glaring through the boarders at the ladies' school (who sat in the front of the gallery) with orbs which seemed to see not. The young ladies were a little afraid of him, and his pallor and loneliness, and the very reputation he had for oddity, enlisted the sympathies of some of them.

Whatever tender flutterings might disturb the bosoms of the young ladies in the galleries, Christopher cared not. His heart was fixed on Barbara.

Barbara, who surely deserves a paragraph to herself, was provokingly pretty, to begin with, and she had a fascinating natural way which made young men and young women alike unhappy. She bubbled over--pardon this kitchen simile--with unaffected gaiety; she charmed, she bewitched, she delighted, she made angry and bewitched again. The young ladies very naturally saw nothing in her, but a certain pert forwardness of which themselves would not be guilty, though it should bring a world of young gentlemen sighing to their feet. Barbara was nineteen, and she had a voice which for gaiety and sweetness was like that of a throstle.

Christopher had himself taught her to sing. His own voice was cacophonous and funereal, and it was droll to hear him solemnly phrasing 'I will enchant thine ear' for the instruction of his enchantress.

But he was a good master, and Barbara prospered under him, and added a professional finish and exactness to her natural graces. She lived alone with an old uncle who had sold everything to buy an annuity, and she had no expectations from anybody.

Christopher had no expectations either, except of a stiff struggle with the world, but the two young people loved each other, and, having their choice of proverbs, they discarded the one which relates to poverty and a door and love and a window, and selected for their own guidance that cheerful saying which sets forth the belief that what is enough for one is enough for two. Christopher, therefore, bent himself like a man to earn enough for one, and up to the time of the beginning of this history had achieved a qualified failure. Barbara believed in his genius, but so far n.o.body else did, and the look-out was not altogether cheerful.

Barbara's surname was Allen, but her G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers at her baptism had been actuated by no reminiscences of ballad poetry, and she was called Barbara because her G.o.dmother was called Barbara and was ready to present her with a silver caudle-cup on condition that the baby bore her name. Christopher knew the sweet and quaint old ballad, and introduced it to his love, who was charmed to discover herself like-named with a heroine of fiction. She used to sing it to him in private, and sometimes to her uncle, but it was exclusively a home song.

Christopher made a violin setting of it which Barbara used to accompany on the pianoforte, a setting in which the poor old song was tortured into wild cadenzas and dizzy cataracts of caterwauling after the approved Italian manner.

The days went by, days that were halcyon under love's own sunshine. What matter if the mere skies were clouded, the mere material sun shut out, the wind bitter? Love can build a shelter for his votaries, and has a sun-shine of his own. Still let me sing thy praises, gracious Love, though I am entering on the days of fogeydom, and my minstrelsy is something rusty. I remember; I remember. Thou and I have heard the chimes at midnight, melancholy sweet.

'Barbara,' said Christopher, one evening, bending his mournful brows above her, 'we must part.'

'Nonsense!' said Barbara smilingly.

'There is no hope of doing anything here,' continued Christopher. 'I must face the world, and if there is anything in me, I must force the world to see it and to own it. I am going up to London.'

'To London?' asked Barbara, no longer smiling.

'To London,' said Christopher, quoting Mrs. Browning; 'to the gathering-place of souls.'

'What shall you do there, Christopher?' asked Barbara, by this time tremulous.

'I shall take my compositions with me,' he answered,' and offer them to the publishers. I will find out the people who give concerts and get leave to play. I will play at first for nothing: I can but try. If I fail, I fail. But there is nothing here to work upon. There is no knowledge of art and no love for it. I must have more elbow-room.'

Elbow-room is indispensable to a violinist, and Barbara was compelled to agree to her lover's programme. She was a brave little creature, and though she was as sorry to part with her lover as even he could wish her, she accepted the inevitable. Christopher finished his quarter's instructions where he had pupils, declined such few further engagements as offered themselves, packed up his belongings in a tin box somewhat too large for them, said farewell, and went his way to London. Barbara went with him by coach into the great neighbouring town five miles away, and saw him off by train. The times and the place where these two were bred were alike primitive, and this farewell journey had no shadow of impropriety in it even for the most censorious eyes. The coach did not return till evening, and little Barbara had three or four hours on her hands. She walked disconsolately from the station, with her veil down to hide the few tears which forced themselves past her resolution. Scarcely noticing whither her feet carried her, she had wandered into a retired and dusty street which bore plainly upon its surface the unwritten but readable announcement of genteel poverty, and there in a parlour window was a largeish placard bearing this legend: 'Mrs. Lochleven Cameron prepares pupils for the Stage. Enquire Within.' A sudden inspiration entered Barbara's heart. She had seen the inside of a theatre once or twice, and she thought herself prettier and knew she could sing better than the singing chambermaid whom everybody had so applauded.

Christopher had often defended the stage from the aspersions cast upon it by the ignorant prejudices of country-bred folk, who looked on the theatre as a device of the Arch-Enemy and an avenue to his halls of darkness. In pious varyings from church she had heard the Eeverend Paul Screed compare the theatrical pit with that other pit of which the Enemy holds perpetual lease, but she respected Christopher's opinion more highly than that of the Eeverend Paul. There was yet a sense of wickedness in the thought which a.s.sailed her, and her heart beat violently as she ascended the steps which led to Mrs. Lochleven Cameron's door. She dried her eyes, summoned her resolution, and rang the bell. A pale-faced lady of stately carriage opened the door.

'I wish,' said little Barbara, with a beating heart, 'to see Mrs.

Cameron.'

'Pray enter,' returned the lady in tones so deep that she might have been a gentleman in disguise.

Barbara entered, and the deep-voiced lady closed the door, and led the way into a scantily furnished parlour, which held, amongst other objects, a rickety-looking grand piano of ancient make.

'Be seated,' said the deep-voiced lady. 'I am Mrs. Lochleven Cameron.

What are your wishes?'

There was just a suspicion of Dublin in Mrs. Cameron's rich and rolling tones.

'You prepare pupils for the stage?' said Barbara. Her own clear and sweet voice sounded strange to her, as though it belonged to somebody else, but she spoke with outward calm.

'Do you wish to take lessons?' asked the lady.

'If I can afford to pay your terms,' said little Barbara.

'What can you do?' asked Mrs. Cameron with stage solemnity. 'Have you had any practice? Can you sing?'

'I do not know what I can do,' said Barbara. 'I can sing a little.'

'Let me hear you,' said the deep voice; and the lady, with a regal gesture, threw open the grand piano.

Barbara drew off her thread gloves and lifted her veil, and then, sitting down to the piano, sang the piteous ballad of the Four Marys.

Barbara knew nothing of the easy emotions of people of the stage, and she was almost frightened when, looking up timidly at the conclusion of the song, she saw that Mrs. Cameron was crying.

'Wait here a time, my dear,' said Mrs. Lochleven Cameron, regally business-like in spite of her tears, but with the suggestion of Dublin a trifle more developed in her voice.

She swept from the room, and closed the door behind her; and Barbara, not yet rid of the feeling that she was somebody else, heard Mrs.

Cameron's voice, somewhat subdued, calling 'Joe.'

'What is it?' asked another deep voice, wherein the influences of Dublin and the stage together struggled.

'Come down,' said Mrs. Cameron; and in answer to this summons a solemn footstep was heard upon the stair. Barbara heard the sound of a whispered conference outside, and then, the door being opened, Mrs.

Cameron ushered in a gentleman tall and lank and sombre, like Mrs.

Cameron, he was very pale, but in his case the pallor of his cheeks was intensified by the blackness of his hair and the purple-black bloom upon his chin and upper lip. He looked to Barbara like an undertaker who mourned the stagnation of trade. To you or me he would have looked like what he was, a second or third-rate tragedian.

'I have not yet the pleasure of your name,' said Mrs. Lochleven Cameron, addressing Barbara.

'My name is Barbara Allen,' said Barbara, speaking it unconsciously as though it were a line of an old ballad.

'This, Miss Allen,' said Mrs. Cameron with a sweep of the right hand which might have served to introduce a landscape, 'is Mr. Lochleven Cameron.'

Barbara rose and curtsied, and Mr. Lochleven Cameron bowed. Barbara concluded that this was _not_ the gentleman who had been called downstairs as 'Joe.'

'Will you' sing that little ballad over again, Miss Allen?' asked Mrs.

Cameron, gravely seating herself.

Barbara sang the ballad over again, and sang it rather better than before.

Mrs. Cameron cried again, and Mr. Cameron said 'Bravo!' at the finish.

'Now,' said Mrs. Cameron, 'do you know anything sprightly?' she p.r.o.nounced it 'sproightly,' but she was off her guard.

Barbara, by this time only enough excited to do her best, sang 'Come la.s.ses and lads,' and sang it like herself, with honest mirth and rural roguishness. For without knowing it, this young lady was a born actress, and did by nature and beautifully what others are taught to do awkwardly.

'You'll have to broaden the style a little for the theatre,' said the tragedienne, 'but for a small room nothing could be better.'