LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 149, 25 November 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

OUR CHRISTMAS EXCURSION. (From St. Paul's Magazine.) ( Continued. ) Phil exclaimed, ‘By Jove ! they must be the fellows that are going to be quartered upon us up at the church to-night. ’ Then he recollected having been given some message, on arrival, which he could not quite understand. Phil was not an apt scholar where Hindostanee was concerned. Always harping on the one string : I thought for a moment, could George Mainwaring be one of these travellers ? and then I dismissed the notion as idle. I found it hard to get back to our billet. When we were near home, Phil had no longer patience with my fatigue, and he followed and passed the others. Nellie, for some reason or another, sent Captain Browne back for me, and, as he and I, a little later than Nellie, entered the ruin, we came upon her with two strangers. Not strangers, though, for one was a Mr Smethurst, a barrister who had lately come to Bombay; and the other was George. What joy I felt ! Intense it was, but shortlived. George look at my companion, just as he had looked at him in the verandah, and then coldly acknowledged my presence. And again, his manner had the effect of making me defiant. I was as cold as he was. At dinner, and during the course of the evening, we learned that the two barristers had started about the same time that we did, had come by a different route, and had meant to go much farther a-field; but, as they were on the point of setting off, an important client of George’s had sent to appoint an early day for an interview on pressing business ; so, like ourselves, they were returning by Dysur on the morrow. They had been beforehand with us, and had engaged the best bullock-cart in the neighborhood, as, they said, we should acknowledge on next day day’s march. Our conversation was general. Mr Smethurst being a fresh importation, his wonder was excited by many things to which we, comparatively old Indians, were quite accustomed, and his remarks were well-nigh endless. Phil was happy to pour into a willing ear preposterous stories about sport in India, about curious native customs, and the strange effects of the climate on Europeans. Phil evidently depended on me to aid and abet him in his efforts to “educate’’the newcomer, but I had not spirit for it. How could I enter into a joke, just then ? My head ached; I heard the voices as if they came from a distance ; and the sense of what was said only reached my brain slowly—sometimes several seconds after the sentence was finished. I was nervously anxious that no one should perceive that I was ill and unhappy ; but, finding me irresponsive when he appealed to me for confirmation of one of his Munchausen stories, Phil called out—

‘ Oh, Moll, you’re not yourself to-night.’ ‘ Mary has looked tired all the afternoon,’ Nellie said. ‘I am going to order her off to bed.’

It was only then I found out the child had been watching me, and was uneasy about me.

George looked up quickly, and made some enquiry about me of Nellie; but his interest subsided when Stanhope Browne volunteered the explanation that I had “ danced so much at the Colonel’s party; I was not quite rested yet. ” I had not the presence of mind to disown Captain Browne for my spokesman.

I went to bed, but I can scarcely say, to rest, for what sleep I had was feverish and uncomfortable, and I lay awake with my wretchedness for a great part of the night. I thought, with something line despair, that all the evening when we had been near each other, George had not once addressed a word to me directly, except at the moment of our meeting : and then, with a gleam of hope, I thought of his quick look of enquiry when they spoke of my being ill or tired. Again, it was a comfort to think over all the little signs that showed he disliked Stanhope Browne ! If he were only jealous, I should know he liked me ; but this I hardly dared to hope. I think I was more tired when I rose in the early morning than I had been when I went to bed ; and certainly my headache was less bearable. One good result of my feeling ill was that I was broken-spirited. Under ordinary circumstances, I should have been prepared to resent George’s studied coldness of manner ; I should have paid him back in his own coin ; but now I was too ill to be capable of entertaining an energetic feeling of pique. 1 imagine that my manner that morning was simply pathetic. When one’s head is like lead, and one is enduring a general sense of misery, one becomes good and amiable. If every exertion be a trouble, one is touchingly grateful for the smallest services rendered by others. Dear old Phil never said anything so brilliant, or so spiteful, as when, a propos of my subdued manner on this particular morning, he quoted the well known lines—- ‘ ‘ When the devil was sick the devil a saint would be, "'hen the devil got well the devil a saint was he !” He followed up this charming piece of poetry with the most good humored roar of laughter those monastic walls had ever echoed. I was not a bit offended, but I had not the heart to join in his mirth. Nellie, however, was offended for me, and pouted, and told Phil he had made a “ most extraordinary speech.” I caught a glimpse of

George’s face, and felt a thrill of delight as I saw that it was a good deal disturbed, and rather angry. I blessed Phil and his “ extraordinary speech ” from my heart, for having brought that expression there ! Before the hour for starting arrived, Phil managed to go out in search of game; but only brought back a solitary jungle fowl. Mr Smethurst seemed disappointed at the sport, and had evidently anticipated great things in consequence of Phil’s descriptions of the night before. Just as we were ready to leave our ruin, we met with a signal misfortune, but I was too apathetic to care much about it. Our carriage and horse fell into the Tannah river. The horse was somewhat injured, and the carriage much broken, and rendered useless for the purpose of our journey. The only explanation we could obtain of the occurrence was, that the horse was “musty” (playfully wicked), and had broken away from the man who was holding him, "W e had one bullockcart, and George and Mr Smethurst had one, but neither of them could well hold more than two people, and such baggage as we were obliged to take with us. A. third cart had to be procured, a very rough one, which Phil insisted upon sharing with Mr Smethurst. Nellie and Captain Browne stowed themselves away in our cart; and, before I could prevent or assent to it, Phil had put me into George’s. ‘lf you’re ill,’ ho said, ‘you must be taken care of, and Mainwaring has the best cart.’ ‘ But, Mr Smethurst ’ I pleaded. ‘Oh, Miss Massey, your brother-in-law will take care of me,’ our new friend said, good-naturedly. ‘ I believe it is the best cart,’ George remarked, but without any marked tone of welcome.

‘Yes, hixt that is the very reason I do not want to deprive Mr Smethxxrst of his place in it,’ I replied, tryingto scrambleont again; but it was of no use : Phil kept me where I was till we were fairly off, and then remonstrances were vain.

‘ I am very sorry they put me in here, ’ I pleaded apologetically to George. As I spoke, the driver gave an extra twist to the tails of the unlucky bullocks, and away we went. What a conveyance a bullock cart is ! What a jolting and shaking they give their unfortunate occupants ! The construction is very primitive. There are not only no springs, but there seems to be nothing in the least degree springy about these carts. We had a good layer of straw in our’s, and cloaks laid upon that, but this only broke the concussion a very little. I could hear Nellie’s ringing laugh above all the rumbling of the wheels and the thumping along the road. What with the uncouth build of the carts, and the rough paces of the bullocks, we were literally thrown about like shuttlecocks, against each other and against the sides of the vehicle. There was no possibiliy of preserving a dignified hauteur in such a position, and George was forced to laugh as we came into violent collision. I laughed, too, a little ; but I had what is graphically described as a “splitting headache,” and, physically, the drive was torture to me. Otherwise, it was very sweet to us both, I think I may say, for George set to work to pity and take care of me, and I thanked him very warmly. ‘But,’ he said, not stiffly now, but genially and kindly, ‘ ought not Captain Browne to be looking after your comforts ?’

I said I would rather he did so, if it was not troubling him too much ; and then, somehow or other, we drifted into an explanation. I hardly know how he began, but, as well as the rough road would allow him, he told me how he had been longer at the colonel’s than I had before imagined ; had seen me dance repeatedly with Captain Browne ; had remembered how often (because he was Nellie’s friend, which George did not then know) he had met Stanhope Browne at our bungalow ; how he had interrupted our tete-a-tete in the verandah, how he had been stung by manner, and had fancied I was perhaps already engaged to Captain Browne. If so, he thought I had shamefully played with his feelings, and he felt a repugnance for anyone who could act so heartlessly. (I winced when he said this, for, though I had never flirted with him, I could not exonerate myself from the charge of flirtation in regard to Mr Smallboy. With Captain Browne it hardly mattered, for he was as little in earnest as I‘was myself.) George told me he had engaged me beforehand to dance at the colonel’s in order to talk to me fully about his affection for me; and he said that it was at that dance, after our quarrel, that he planned his excursion, hoping for some good from the change, and in order to have time to think, and, if possible, an opportunity for fighting with, and conquering, his love for me. I don’t think he said quite all this, as we jolted along the road to Dysur, but we managed to say a great deal—l crying, mea culpa, very humbly—and when Phil, by the time we had made about half our distance, came after us on foot, and called out ‘Mainwaring, wouldn’t you rather walk than be shaken to pieces in that infernal cart? We’ve not three miles more before we get to the station,’ George declined pedestrianism. Phil declared there was ‘no accounting for taste,’ and charged us to have something for him to eat in the station room. Mr Shethurst and he then dismissed their cart, and trudged along in spite of the heat, and all other difficulties. At Dysur Nellie exclaimed, ‘ I do believe, Mary, that horrid drive has done your headache good. I whispered that ‘my heartache was cured, though my head was as bad as ever.’ Nellie was greatly puzzled, and had evidently hard work to obey my injunctions and avoid questioning me until we were alone, i. . ; almost train-time when the weary and dusty pedestrians reached the station. In our two hours’ journey by rail, Nellie sat opposite me, and George next me. To he continued.