Cruel As The Grave

"But their visits were not kindly received, and not in any case

returned. And the report went around the neighborhood, that Philip

Dubarry was as morose and selfish as his father had been before him. And

so the house was abandoned, as it had been in the days of the old man

and the idiot girl.

"But by and by other rumors, darker and more dishonorable to the master

and mistress of Shut-up Dubarry, crept out among the people. These

rumors were started by the Dubarry servants, in their gossipping with

other family servants in the chance meeting in church or village. They

were to the effect that Philip Dubarry often quarrelled fiercely with

his gipsy wife, and even threatened to send her back to her native

county, and that Gentiliska, or Iska, as she was more commonly called,

wept and raved and tore her black hair by turns.

"It is the old sad tale, dear Sybil. At length the cultivated scholar

and unprincipled villain grew tired of his beautiful but ignorant gipsy

wife, who was a wife only in justice and not in law. He frequently left

home for long absences. He spent his winters in the cities, and his

summers in a round of visits to hospitable country houses, leaving her

at all seasons to pine and weep, or rage and tear her hair in the gloomy

solitude of Shut-up Dubarry. But for all this, whenever he did

condescend to visit his home, she received him with an eagerness of

welcome--a perfect self-abandonment to joy, that knew no bounds. And

when he left her again, her despair was but the deeper, her anguish the

fiercer. And all this was duly reported by that indefatigable corps of

reporters, the domestics of the house.

"At last came the crisis. Philip Dubarry sent down an agent who opened

the doors of Shut-up Dubarry, and brought into it an army of workmen, to

repair, refurnish and decorate the mansion-house. In vain Gentiliska

asked questions; the workmen either could not or would not give her any

satisfaction. 'It was the master's orders,' they said, and nothing more.

To no one in the world were 'the master's' orders more sacred than to

his loyal gipsy wife. She bowed in submission, and let the workmen do

their will. All the summer season was occupied with the work. But by the

first of October the house was thoroughly renewed, within and without,

so that it seemed like a palace in the midst of Paradise; and the gipsy

wife wandered through the house and grounds in a delight that was only

damped by the long-continued absence of her husband.

"At length, near the middle of the month, at the height of the hunting

season, Philip Dubarry arrived. But the eager welcome of his wife was

met with coldness and petulance, that wounded and enraged her. She gave

way to a storm of grief and fury. She wept and raved and tore her hair,

as was her way when fiercely excited. But now he had not the least

patience with her, or the least mercy on her. He had ceased to love her

and to want her, and so, in acting out his selfish and demoniac nature,

he did not hesitate to treat her with cruel scorn and ignominy. He told

her that she was not his wife, and never had been so. He called her ill

names, and bade her pack up and go, he cared not where, so it was out of

his sight, for he hated her; and out of his house also, for she

dishonored it; and that, after being repaired and refurnished, it must

also be purified of her presence, before he could bring into it the

fair maiden whom he was about to make his wife.