LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 40, 16 July 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE DANGEROUS CLASSES ‘OUT WEST.’ [ Concluded .] There is an impression in England, continually fostered by the preposterous tales professing to sketch frontier life, that, after all, allowing for the more deadly mode of settling quarrels there, things are much the same in the ‘ Territories’ as in England. It is no such thing. I never knew an instance of a man being shot in fair fight ; in open, prepared, and agreed combat. To be armed is to be ‘ heeled.’ in western slang; and the popular idea runs that if a man is armed, and the one with whom he wishes to fight is not, the first bids the second go and get himself heeled, and will not harm him until he has done so. I was told this when I arrived out; but I had not settled down a week before a man was shot dead, as he stepped from a house into the dark street, by a hidden assassin, wl;o was never discovered. Indeed the whole of my experience emphatically contradicts this theory; I have hardly ever known a man killed or hurt save by being waylaid, ambushed or ‘ bush-whacked,’ by being taken oil his guard, by being overpowered by numbers, or by being attacked lay an armed man when he was defenceless. Their fair lights, as they call them, arc more horrible than their shootings ; and did our legislators but sec how these men settle their quarrels, it would make them hesitate to check pugilism in England. We have all heard of gouging and the like horrors, which arc always allowed in a fair fight; but the great thing to be done is to get your antagonist down ; this once accomplished, you keep him there, and kick nira in the throat, the head, or places more dangerous still, until he is senseless ; and this mode of fighting is by no means unusual throughout the western and more lawless States. I wish lo say nothing vindictively, but literature has as yet, and for various reasons, given no proper account of the state of society 1 out west.’ IN THE DARK. Ix Two Chapters.—l. [From “ Once a Week.] ‘ What shall we do to amuse him?’ ‘Oh, there is always the river ; and when he is tired of that we we can drive to Bayshara Woods, and picnic, or take him to see the catacombs in Park-place After all, he is not the Shah, that we need worry ourselves to death over his entertainment.”

It is I who say this, in a slightly fretful tone, which makes my good cousin look on me with mild parsouical rebuke. After all, it is rather upsetting to a mild village vicar to have to entertain a London belle and a real, live guardsman at the same time. If I were one of his young lady parishioners, or only a cousin, he might give me the rebuke in words ; being an heiress, however, and a visitor, he merely looks remonstrance. To my great surprise the London belle, a Miss Tremaine, and his wife’s niece, puts in a word of comfort.

I don’t think you need be afraid of Captain Gayle requiring much amusement uncle. There ia nothing he dislikes so much, in general.”

Shakspeare says that a low voice is “ an excellent thing in a woman.” Don’t you think Shakespeare sometimes tells—crams? Surely there arc low voices which seem to glide into your ear like cod liver oil—voices which creep when others run, and yet always reach you first. Laura Treraain, has a skin like while satin, dove-like eyes of rich, moist brown, and a long, round throat, on which her graceful head sways like some fair garden lily. Men rave about Laura, fight as to who shall hold her bouquet, and make compact groups around her chair directly she makes her appearance. Even Benedicks fall victims to the witchery of her liquid eyes, and happy wives grow grim at the mention of her name. The wonder is that she is not married ; that at twenty-five any girl so wonderfully, seductively lovely should be still unappropriated by any one of her numerous adorers; while dozens of other girls, less beautiful, and infinitely less run after, are going off every day. My cousin, the Reverend John, says it is because she has no money ; and men can’t afford to marry penniless women now coals are so dear. Beauty goes down as coals go up. It is a mere item in the Stock Exchange. My cousin's wife says says Laura is difficile, and hints at matches she might have made if she had only taken a little trouble. I am rather of Laura’s opinion in this matter, however, and think that fish who require so much “ play ” before they can be made to bite arc seldom worth the lauding. My fish bite soon enough, indecently soon sometimes, considering that I have had to say “ No ” three times since I “ came out,” fourteen months ago; but there is no triumph in the fact. Almost any fish will rise to a golden bait, and mine is so very glittering—l am so heavily, enormously weighted. Nineteen, no imbecility in the family, and one hundred thousand pounds ! Could the most sclf-abuegatory of mankind refuse that? The answer is humiliatingly easy. I feel humiliatingly small whenever it occurs to me, and am thankful that Providence and my deceased parents have kindly settled my fate for me beforehand by bestowing me and my fortune in prospectu on Dallas Gayle, the only son of an old friend, whose estate runs side by side with ours. On second thoughts, I am not always thankful : not to-day, at any rate, when Dallas is coming for the express purpose of settling this old arrang.ment. It is not pleasant to be bound down to “ love, honour, and obey” some one unknown, while your young affections are as yet centred in the pap bottle ; to be ticketed “ sold ” before nature has more than sketched you in barest monochrome, or the buyer emerged into knickerbockers. I should like to know what Dallas is like ; to see whether he says, “ Haw ! don’t know, weally ; never could guess widdles,” when I ask him why Dr Kenealy and his client arc alike ; and subsides into gloomy and offended unintdligence when I briskly reply. “Because they both got into trouble through Wapping (whopping) relations. How can you be so stupid ?” I should like to know whether he is the sort of man to call you a goose, and take you on his knee ; or to make the whole house miserable if his little toe aches, and keep a vocabulary of pretty things to say to ladies who are not of his family. As it happens, I now nothing about Dallas. When we were wee children (when I was wee, at least), we were put to play together, and he set me in a big cucumber frame that I couldn’t get out of, and went off to fish for sticklebacks in the pond by himself. After that he went to school. After that my parents died, and I went to school. After that he was at college, and, owing to his mother’s death, we did not even meet in vacations ; his being spent at home, mine with Aunt Fanny in Wales or Cousin John in Berkshire. After that I came out, and he, by ill luck, was with his regiment at Gibraltar. After that, just before the next season, he came home ; and I, by more ill luck, took the measles, and had to rusticate at the rectory. Now I am well again—have been so some time, indeed. August has come ; Miss Tremaine has withdrawn her charms from evacuated London, and come too, Dallas is coming—might have been here before if his manifold engagements had allowed him to accept the invitations sent immediately after my recovery. And I know nothing about him —nothing more than his photos say— i.e., broad shoulders, straight legs, good forehead and wide mouth, hair curly—and the last of these was taken three years ago ! He may be god or devil for aught I can tell; and yet in a few weexs 1 shall have fixed the day for marrying him. He will have gone through the formula of asking, ‘ Will you marry me, Miss Jerniugham ?’ I that of uttering the prearranged • Yes ;’ and it will all be setttled without any romance, or sentiment, or lovers’ quarrels, doubts, and agonies whatsaver. Well, after all, it is a great saving of trouble ; only at nineteen one does not much care about trouble; and-I should like to know why Miss Tremaine, who sat through so many discussions of the absent hero without taking any part in them, should now, on the eve of his coining, suddenly allude to him as to one with whom she is well acquainted. In the causeless irritation of the moment I speak out. ‘ Do you know Captain Gayle, then, Laura ! Why did you never say so ?’ Her beautiful brown eyes open with gentle surprise. “I have met him in Loudon,’ she says, quietly. • You never told me so.’ ‘ Did I not ?’ with a little hauteur. ‘Possibly I have not mentioned some hundreds of other acquaintances. It is surely not necessary,’ I feel snubbed. Not now for the first time am I to learn that Miss Tremaine does not like me. The Reverend John looks at his watch. ‘A quarter to five,’ he says, ‘and he is to come by the 5.10 train ; isn’t he, Daisy V (This to me.) ‘ Now, who is going to take the pony carriage into Henley to meet him ? It’s too hot for the water, I suppose, or you two girls could row down, and he could bring yon back.’ ‘ Perhaps he can’t row,’ I suggest. ‘ Can’t Jane go, if it is necessary that he should be met ?’ John shakes his head. 1 Jane can’t leave Tommy, his teeth arc so troublesome; and I have my sermon to write. Daisy, don’t be inhospitable. What would you think if you had been met by only a servant V ‘I am not Captain Gayle, and perhaps there is nothing he dislikes so much as being met,’ I answer saucily, glancing at Laura. She does not smile ; on the contrary, she is very pale. A minute afterwards I hear her telling John, in her soft semi-whisper, that

she has a terrible headache. She does not think she can stay downstairs or appear at dinner this evening. John is mad on homoeopathy. Ho darts at a big book and a little cheat, and begins fumbling for the prescription. Laura stands waiting in courteous patience, her flower-like bead a little bent, a stream of sunlight falling through the open French window upon her crisp white dress and elapsed hands. On the window-sill I recline warm and flushed, my back against a great tub of azaleas, pink, white, and red, broken half-lights trembling through the leaves upon my insignificant little face and crumpled muslin gown. Outside the gnats arc making a little black cloud in the yellow, burning sunshine. There is a smell of summer in the air, a weight of hot grass and roses and southern-scented heliotrope. John goes on puzzling over aconite and belladonna. He can’t make out whether Laura is fair or not. Her eyes arc dark ; and in the middle the door opens, and James announces— ‘ Captain Gayle.’

We all start. For one moment I see Laura’s bauds clench tight—tight, till the soft, white fiesh grows darkly, cruelly red, beneath the slender fingers. For one moment, athwart that bar of gold-dusted sunshine, I sec a face, ghastly pale, glaring at her in mute, wondering inquiry ; and then Laura is gone, and John is slinking hands with the goodliest, kinglieat man I have ever seen, Such a man ! Ah, heavens I the Greeks of old made gods of them, and worshipped them openly on Mount Parnassus. It is women who defy them now, and pour out worship in the secrecy of their own hearts ; that is all the difference. And yet they are no better than other men ; muscles do not mean magnanimity ; size is not always coexistent with sanctity ; beauty of face is not inseparable from ugliness of soul. With the generosity of nineteen, I make Dallas a present of all these inward charms to match the outer ones. AVith the headlong hurry of nineteen, I fall fiercely, furiously in love with the individual for whom I have been so prosaically destined from my babyhood, the individual I have been pettishly depreciating for the last six weeks. My face is scarlet as a peony when John introduces me as ‘ Your old friend, Miss Jcrningham.’ A shy, conscious, too delighted simper is quivering in every feature as I put out my hand to be taken in that strong, cool grasp. To he continued.