BARBARA REBELL
BARBARA REBELL
By
MRS. BELLOC-LOWNDES
Author of "The Heart of Penelope"
Frontispiece by
GILBERT WHITE
AUTHORIZED EDITION
NEW YORK
B. W. DODGE AND COMPANY
1907
PROLOGUE.
"Have regard to thy name; for that shall continue with theeabove a thousand great treasures of gold."
Ecclesiasticus xl. 12.
Barbara Rebell's tenth birthday,—that is theninth of June, 1870,—was destined to be long rememberedby her as a day of days; both as having seenthe first meeting with one who, though unknown tillthen, had occupied a great place in her imagination, ifonly because the name of this lady, her godmother,had been associated every night and morning withthat of her father and mother in her prayers, andas having witnessed the greatest of her childishdisappointments.
Certain dates to most of us become in time retrospectivelymemorable, and doubtless this sunny,fragrant June day would in any case have beenremembered by Barbara as the last of a long series ofhigh days and holidays spent by her in her Frenchhome during the first few years of her life. BarbaraRebell left St. Germains two months after her tenthbirthday; but the town which has seen so few changesin its stately, ordered beauty, since it afforded a magnificenthospitality to the last Stuart King and Queenof England, always remained to her "home," in the[pg 2]dear and intimate sense of the word, and that for manyyears after everything save the actual roof and walls ofthe villa where Mr. and Mrs. Rebell had lived such long,and on the whole such peaceful years, had been destroyed—overwhelmedwith locust-like destruction—by thepassage of an alien soldiery.
But early in the June of 1870 there was nothing toshow what July and August were to bring to France,and the various incidents which so much impressed thechild's imagination, and made the day memorable,were almost wholly connected with that solitary innerlife which is yet so curiously affected by materialoccurrences.
Barbara's birthday began very differently from whatshe had thought it would do. The little girl hadpleasant recollections of the fashion in which her lastfête day, "la Sainte Barbe," had been celebrated.She remembered vividly the white bouquets broughtby the tradespeople, the cakes and gifts offered by herlittle French friends, they who dwelt in Legitimistseclusion in the old town—for St. Germains was atthat time a Royalist stronghold—far from the supposedmalign influence of the high forest trees, andbroad, wind-swept Terrace, which had first attractedBarbara's parents, and caused them to choose St.Germains as their place of retreat.
And so Barbara had looked forward very eagerly toher tenth birthd