Cruel as the grave

by Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

“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 first rough cottage. He called the mansion the Chateau Dubarry, a name 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 five more.

“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.

“He remained abroad until summoned home by two events—the deaths of his 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.

“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.