Cruel Barbara Allen | Page 2

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 nobody else did, and the look-out was not altogether cheerful.
Barbara's surname was Allen, but her godfathers and godmothers at her
baptism had been actuated by no reminiscences of ballad poetry, and
she was called Barbara because her godmother 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