LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 52, 30 July 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. [From the ‘ Atlantic Monthly.’] Concluded. With an organisation ns delicate as a woman’s he had that spirit which, however, sluggish in repose, leaps with a kind of exultation to measure its strength with disaster. The vague fear of the supernatural, that would affect most men in a similar situation, found no room in his heart. Ho was simply shut in a chamber from which it was necessary he should obtain relief within a given period. That this chamber contained the body of the woman he loved, so far from adding to the terror of the case, was a cir-

curaslance from which he drew consolation. She was a beautiful white statue now. Her soul was hence ; and if that pure spirit could return, would it not be to shield him with her love ? It was impossible that the place should not engender some thoughts of the kind. He did not put the thought entirely from him as he rose to his feet and stretched out his hands in the darkness but his mind was too healthy and practical to indulge long in such speculations. Philip being a smoker, chanced to have in his pocket a box of allumettes. After several ineffectual essays. lie succeeded in igniting one against tire dank wall, and by its momentary glare perceived that Hie candle had been left in the tomb. This would serve him in examining the fastenings of the vault. If he could force the inner door by any means, and reach the grating, of which he had an indistinct recollection, he might hope to make himself heard. But the oaken door was immovable, as solid as the wall itself, into which it filled air-tight. Even if he had had the requisite tools, there were no fastening to be removed ; the hinges were were set on the outside.

Having ascertained this, Philip replaced the candle on the floor, and leaned against the wall thoughtfully, watching the blue fan of flame that wavered to and fro, threatening to detatch itself from the wick. ‘At all events,’ he thought, ‘ the place is well ventilated.’ Suddenly he sprang forward and extinguished the light. His existence depended on that candle.

He had read somewhere, in some account of shipwreck, how the survivors had lived for days upon a few candles which one of the passengers had insanely thrown into the long boat. And here he had been burning away his very life. By the transient illumination of one of the tapers he looked at his watch. It had stopped at 11—but 11 that day or the preceding night ? The funeral he knew had left the church at 10. How many hours had been his swoon ? Alas ! it was no longer possible for him to measure those hours which crawl like snails by the wretched, and fly like swallows over the happy. He picked up the candle, and seated himself on the stone stops. He was a sanguine man, but, as he weighed the chances of escape, the prospect appalled him. Of course he would be missed. His disappearance under the circumstances would surely alarm his friends ; they would instigate a search for him ; but who would think of searching for a live man in the cemetery of Montmatre. The prefect of police would set a hundred intelligences at work to find him ; the Seine might be dragged, les miserables turned over at the Morgue ; a description of him would be in every detective’s pocket, and he in M. Dorine’s family tomb. Yet, on the other hand, it was here he was last seen ; from this point a keen detective would naturally work up the case. Then might not the undertaker return for the candlestick, probably not left by design. Or again, might not M. Dorine rend fresh wreaths of flowers to take the place of those which now diffused a pungent, aromatic odour throughout the chamber ? Ah,! what unlikely chances. But if one of these things did not happen speedily, it had better never happen. How long could he keep life in himself.

With his pocket-knife Wentworth cut the half-burned candle into four equal parts. < To-night,’ he meditated, 1 1 will eat the first of those pieces ; to-morrow, the second ; to-morrow evening, the third ; the next day, the fourth ; and then—then I’ll wait.’ He had taken no breakfast that morning, unless a cup of coffee can be called a breakfast. He had never been very hungry before. He was ravenously hungry now. But he postponed the meal as long as practicable. It must have been near midnight according to his calculations when he determined to try the first of his four singular repasts. The bit of white wax was tasteless, but it served its purposes. His appetite for the time appeased, he found a new discomfort. The humidity of the walls, and the wind that crept through the unseen ventilator, chilled him to the bone. To keep walking was his only resource. A kind of drowsiness, too, occasionally came over him. It took all his will to fight it off. To sleep, he felt was to die ; and he made up his mind to live. The strangest fancies flitted through his head as he groped up and down the stone floor of the dungeon, feeling his way along the wall to avoid the sepulchres. Voices that had long been .silent spoke words that had long been forgotten; faces he had known in childhood grew palpable against the dark. His whole life in detail was unrolled before him like a panorama; the changes of a year, with its burden of love and death, its sweets and its bitternesses, were epitomised in a single second. The desire to sleep had left him, but the keen hunger came again. It must be near morning now, he mused ; perhaps the sun is just gilding the pinnacles and domes of the city ; or. maybe, a dull, drizzling rain is beating on Paris, sobbing on these mounds above me. Paris !it seems like a dream. Did I ever walk in its gay boulevards in the golden air 1 O the delight and pain and passion of that sweet human life !

Philip became conscious that the gloom, the silence, and the cold were gradually conquering him. The feverish activity of his brain brought a reaction. He grew lethargic, he sunk down on the steps, and thought of nothing, His hand fell by chance on one of the pieces of candle ; he grasped it and devoured it mechanically. This revived him. * [Tow strange,’ he,though, ’ that I am not thirsty. Is it not possible that the dampness of the walls, which I must inhale with every breath, has supplied the need of water ? Not a drop has passed ray lips for two days, and still I experience no thirst. That drowsiness, thank Heaven, has gone. I think I was never wide awake until this hour. It would be an ianodyne-like poison that could weigh down my eyelids. No doubt the dread of sleep has something to do with this. The minutes were like hours. Now he walked as briskly as he dared up and down the tomb ; now he rested against the door. More than once he was tempted to throw himself upon the stone coffin that held Julie, and make no further struggle for his life. Only one piece of candle remained. He had eaten the third portion, not to satisfy hunger, but from precautionary motive. He had taken it ns a man takes some disagreeable drug upon the result of which hangs safety. The time was rapidly approaching when even (his poor substitute for nourishment would be exhausted. He delayed that moment. II ; gave himself a long fast this time. The half-inch of caudle which he

held in his hand was a sacred thing to him. It was his last defence against death. At length, with such a sinking heart as he had not known before, ho raised it to his lips. Then he paused, then he hurled the fragment across the tomb, then the oaken door flung open, and Philip, with dazzled eyes, saw M. Dorine’s form sharply defined against the blue sky. When they led him out, half-blind, into the broad daylight, M. Dorine noticed that Philip's hair, which a short time since was as black as a crow’s wing, had actually turned gray in places. The man’s eyes, too, had faded ; the darkness had dimmed their lustre.

‘ And how long was he really confined in the tomb ? ’ I asked, as Mr II concluded the story. ‘ Just one hour and twenty minutes ! ’ replied Mr , smiling blandly. As he spoke, the Lilliputian sloops, with their sails all blown out like white roses, came floating bravely into port, and Philip Wentworth lounged by us, wearily, in the pleasant April sunshine. Mr H ’s narrative haunted me. Here was a man who had undergone a strange ordeal. Here was a man whose sufferings were unique. His was no threadbare experience. Eighty minutes had seemed like two days to him 1 If he had really been immured two days in the tomb, the story, from my point of view, would have lost its tragic element. After this it was but natural I should regard Mr Wentworth with deepened suriosity. As I met him from day to day, passing through the common with that same-intro-spective air, there was something in his loneliness which touched me. I wondered that I had not read before in his pale, meditative face some such sad history as Mr H had confided to me. I formed the resolution of speaking to him, though with no very lucid purpose. One morning we came face to face at the intersection of the two paths. He halted courteously to allow me the precedence.

‘ Mr Wentworth,’ I began, ‘I ’ He interrupted me. ‘ My name, sir,’ he said, in an off-hand manner, ‘ is Jones,’

1 Jo-Jo Jones ! ’ I gasped. 1 No, not Joseph Jones,’ returned he with a glacial sir, ‘Frederick.’ A dim light, in which the perfidy of my friend IT was becoming discernible, began to break upon my mind. It will probably be a standing wonder to Mr Frederick Jones why a strange man accosted him one morning on the Common as I Mr Wentworth,’ and then dashed madly down the nearest footpath and disappeared in the crowd.

The fact is, I had been duped by Mr H clivities, and has, it is whispered, become somewhat demented in brooding over the Great American Novel —not yet hatched. He had actually tried the effect of one of his chapters on me ! My hero, as I subsequently learned, is a common-place young person who had some connection, I do not know what, with the building of that graceful granite bridge which spans the crooked silver lake in the Public Garden.

When I think of the readiness with which Mr H built up his airy fabric on my credulity, I feel half inclined to laugh, though i am deeply mortified at having been the unresisting victim of his Black Art.