Word: babyons
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Babyon Court had been "lived in, lived in, until it could go on living all by itself." So violently did each generation lead its own life that the Black Babyons lived forever in the whispered tales of villagers and gypsies, forever in the portraits that glared fiercely from the dusky walls of the manor gallery. Tainted with madness, each generation warped and haunted the next, till between them their evil eye withered the fruit of the womb, and ended the line. Vivid, self-willed, fascinating, they had persisted through four ages...
Georgian. Hariot Babyon affianced her flashing black beauty and fabulous fortune to her Cousin Jamie. But "she was a black woman on a red ground ... a sight he should have seen last year, on his tour, not now, home in safe sunny England." Terrified, he ran off with Menella, fair-haired handmaiden in "rose linen sprigged with small corn flowers and carnations." They swore to be true "till death us do part." Hariot's death, by her own jealous hand, did part them, and haunt them, till Jamie rode to his own frenzied death, and thus joined the siren...
Edwardian. This son, Nicholas, married a spirited girl who brought to Babyon Court a virile zest for life, but lost it in the murky shadows of the portrait gallery. Frightened by the black sneer of Hariot and Isabella, she rushed from the gallery, fell stumbling down the broad staircase, and lost her unborn child. She never had another, for Nicholas, last of the Babyons, was old and bitter and resigned, given to eerie moods...
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