Cruel As The Grave
Page 147"Fierce and bitter was the rivalry between the lovers. But the young
girl returned the love of John Berners, and married him, and became your
ancestress, as you know, Sybil.
"And from that time to the time of the extinction of the American branch
of the Dubarry family, a feud, as fierce and bitter, if not as warlike,
as any that ever raged between rival barons of the middle ages,
prevailed between the Berners and the Dubarrys.
"I come now to the period just before the breaking out of the Old French
War, when the first rude stone lodges in these valleys had given place
to handsome and spacious manor houses, and when the then proprietor of
the Dubarry estate had erected a magnificent dwelling on the site of his
which the country people quickly changed into Shut-up Dubarry.
"The last name was not inappropriate, for a more morose, solitary, and
misanthropical man never lived than Henry Dubarry, the builder of that
house. He neither visited nor received visits, but remained selfishly
'shut-up' in the paradise of art and letters that he had created within
his dwelling.
"He had a wife, a son, and two daughters, all of whom suffered more or
less from this isolation from their fellow-beings. So it was a great
relief to the son when he was sent, first to the William and Mary
College of Williamsburg for five years, and afterwards to Oxford for
"After the departure of the son and brother, the mother and sisters
suffered more and more seriously from the gloom and horror of their
isolation, and in the course of years utterly succumbed to it. First the
mother died, then the elder sister; and then the younger sister, left
alone with her recluse father in that awful house, became a maniac.
"Under these circumstances, the father wrote to his son to come home.
But selfishness, not love, ruled that young man, as it had ruled his
fathers. He had graduated with honors, and won a 'fellowship' at the
University, and he was about to start for the fashionable European tour.
He wrote home to this effect, and went on his farther way.
father and sister, and the necessity of raising money for himself.
"He came home, but not alone. He brought with him a gipsy girl of
singular beauty, who seemed to be passionately attached to him, and whom
he loved as much as it was in his selfish nature to love anything.
"He placed her at the head of his household, and his simple servants
obeyed her as their mistress; and his sociable neighbors, willing to
forgive old rebuffs, called upon the young pair.