第30章 BARBARA OF THE HOUSE OF GREBE(13)

From that time the life of this scared and enervated lady--whose existence might have been developed to so much higher purpose but for the ignoble ambition of her parents and the conventions of the time--was one of obsequious amativeness towards a perverse and cruel man.Little personal events came to her in quick succession--half a dozen,eight,nine,ten such events,--in brief;she bore him no less than eleven children in the eight following years,but half of them came prematurely into the world,or died a few days old;only one,a girl,attained to maturity;she in after years became the wife of the Honourable Mr.Beltonleigh,who was created Lord D'Almaine,as may be remembered.

There was no living son and heir.At length,completely worn out in mind and body,Lady Uplandtowers was taken abroad by her husband,to try the effect of a more genial climate upon her wasted frame.But nothing availed to strengthen her,and she died at Florence,a few months after her arrival in Italy.

Contrary to expectation,the Earl of Uplandtowers did not marry again.Such affection as existed in him--strange,hard,brutal as it was--seemed untransferable,and the title,as is known,passed at his death to his nephew.Perhaps it may not be so generally known that,during the enlargement of the Hall for the sixth Earl,while digging in the grounds for the new foundations,the broken fragments of a marble statue were unearthed.They were submitted to various antiquaries,who said that,so far as the damaged pieces would allow them to form an opinion,the statue seemed to be that of a mutilated Roman satyr;or if not,an allegorical figure of Death.Only one or two old inhabitants guessed whose statue those fragments had composed.

I should have added that,shortly after the death of the Countess,an excellent sermon was preached by the Dean of Melchester,the subject of which,though names were not mentioned,was unquestionably suggested by the aforesaid events.He dwelt upon the folly of indulgence in sensuous love for a handsome form merely;and showed that the only rational and virtuous growths of that affection were those based upon intrinsic worth.In the case of the tender but somewhat shallow lady whose life I have related,there is no doubt that an infatuation for the person of young Willowes was the chief feeling that induced her to marry him;which was the more deplorable in that his beauty,by all tradition,was the least of his recommendations,every report bearing out the inference that he must have been a man of steadfast nature,bright intelligence,and promising life.

The company thanked the old surgeon for his story,which the rural dean declared to be a far more striking one than anything he could hope to tell.An elderly member of the Club,who was mostly called the Bookworm,said that a woman's natural instinct of fidelity would,indeed,send back her heart to a man after his death in a truly wonderful manner sometimes--if anything occurred to put before her forcibly the original affection between them,and his original aspect in her eyes,--whatever his inferiority may have been,social or otherwise;and then a general conversation ensued upon the power that a woman has of seeing the actual in the representation,the reality in the dream--a power which (according to the sentimental member)men have no faculty of equalling.

The rural dean thought that such cases as that related by the surgeon were rather an illustration of passion electrified back to life than of a latent,true affection.The story had suggested that he should try to recount to them one which he had used to hear in his youth,and which afforded an instance of the latter and better kind of feeling,his heroine being also a lady who had married beneath her,though he feared his narrative would be of a much slighter kind than the surgeon's.The Club begged him to proceed,and the parson began.