LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 164, 14 December 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

URSULA LERMA’S REPENTANCE. (Concluded.) And Ruth started at the sound of her voice as we start when some one speaks in the midst of a solemn, religious service. Just then Ruth heard a low cry close behind her. Turning hurriedly round, she saw that the noise came from little Fairy, who had followed her up-stairs. Fairy was crouching down with her paws stretched out before her; while her small, well-cut bat’s ears were laid hack upon her neck, and her whole body was in a tremor of fear. Unable to imagine Avhat was the matter with the dog, Miss Brandon took her up in her arms. The poor little animal then hid her head under Ruth’s cloak, as she always did when much frightened, and continued trembling. ‘ I must go down and speak to Mary about this poor child,’ thought Ruth to herself ‘ They really ought not to leave it with this dying woman. ’ She left the room ; and, as she did so, felt an indescribable relief, as though she had suddenly come down out of the rarefied air on a mountain top. Fairy, also, ceased to shake, and licked her mistress’s hands. ‘ You really should not leave that little child with the old woman, ’ said Miss Brandon, on reaching the kitchen. ‘ Child, ma’am ! what do you mean ?’ exclaimed Mary, looking at her in the utmost surprise. ‘ I mean the pale child with the beautiful golden hair, that is lying beside old Ursula.’ Mary stared at her with increasing astonishment, and at length cried, ‘ I know now what it must be. Ursula is telling up about a child that has got hold of her, as she has been doing all the evening. I could not sense much of what she said ; but it was something like that. And you, Miss Brandon, as be very natural for a young lady that is not accustomed to dying people, have got frightened, and have fancied you saw what she talked about. It is very wisht to hear sick folk tell up so.’ ‘ But, Mary, it could not be a fancy; for I saw the child as plainly as I see you at this moment.’

‘ Wliat child do you think it was, then, ma’am?’ rejoined Mary, rather impatiently. ‘You known that John and I have never had a child of our own ; and I will take my happy David before the magistrate that none of the neighbors’ children have been inside our doors this evening. ’ ‘Come upstairs with me, then, Mary, and you shall see for yourself,’ said Ruth. With an incredulous toss of the head, the good woman followed the young lady out of the kitchen. But how unutterable was Ruth’s surprise and bewilderment to find, on entering Ursula’s room, that there was no child to be seen. ‘ There, now !’ said Mary, triumphantly, ‘ I told you, ma’am, it was all fancy. As John says, we women do fancy anything. ’ Miss Brandon, however, made no reply, and only smiled abstractedly; for, as she thought of the strange fact of Ursula’s wandering talk having dwelt so much upon the presence of a child, thought also of the dog’s unaccountable terror, of her own singular sensations when last in this room, and of the disappearance of that pale, brighthaired little one, an uncomfortable notion that she had seen a ghost began to arise in her mind. But, knowing the aptitude for superstition in the West country character, she said nothing of this idea to the blacksmith’s wife. Mary asked her to stay for a few minutes beside the old woman while she went downstairs to send her husband for the doctor, and to put away the supper-things before taking her place by Ursula’s bed for the night. To this Ruth at once consented, though it must be owned that when she found herself alone her heart fluttered somewhat uneasily. Slowly the moments passed ; Ruth sat by old Ursula with little Fairy, whose wide open, watchful eyes proved that she was still not quite comfortable. Miss Brandon felt nervous, as she thought of the strange circumstance that had just happened to her, though her strong, clear, religions faith was a shield which protected her in some measure against fear of the supernatural, as it protects man against evei \ other fear. Those words of Milton—‘Myriads of spiritual creatures walk the earth both when we wake and when we sleep,’ would keep gliding into her mind, and repeated themselves over and over in a sort of monotonous chime. All the ghost stories she had ever read or heard flitted around her. There seemed to be a voice in the wind that whistled through the chinks of the window. She went on fancying that the bed curtain stirred, as if touched by an invisible hand. The moonbeams, as they stole in, looked like the shimmering white robes of spirits, ‘ I wish Edward were here, or some one with whom I could talk reasonably,’ she

thought, and wrapped her cloak around her; for the room felt chilly. All at once Ursula, who had hitherto been slumbering, stirred in her bed, and raised herself to a sitting posture. Her eyes were fixed wildly upon a distant corner of the room, and her hand felt among her pillows, from which she seemed to draw something out. ‘ I shall meet him at the churchyard gate,’ she cried, in her native Italian, in a loud clear voice. Then she fell back and died. That night a horseman came trotting slowly along the road from the moor. His red coat proclaimed him a hunter, and the splashes of genuine Exmoor mud, which covered his dress, as well as the legs of his powerful bay, proved him to have ridden hard. This gentleman was Frederick Ormsby. To him belonged the large house near Brackinton, which had been the home of his ancestors. But as he and his father, who was now dead, had always lived abroad, the old house had been for the last thirty years only inhabited by servants. An English friend young Ormsby had made at Naples had persuaded him to come and stay with him at his house at Linton, during the staghunting season. Since he had been at Linton Frederick had often thought of riding over to look over at the old house, but various small hindrances had prevented his doing so. This evening, however, when he found himself, after a long day’s hunting, close to Brackinton, he had resolved, instead of going back ten miles to Linton, to go to the old house, and content himself with whatever accommodation he might find there. He had been used abroad to a roving life, and he rather liked the slight spice of adventure there was in this proceeding. Up the long village street rode Frederick Ormsby, thinking how his quondam, deli-cately-gloved, glossy-moustached, Neapolitan associates, who were probably sauntering down the Toledo, would stare could they see his present whereabouts. Though half an Italian, through his mother, the English blood in his viens had begun lately to rebel against the dolce far nielite existence of his youth. He was now thirty, and he made up his mind, henceforth, to take life more in earnest. At the end of the village there stands first the church and then the parsonage. As Ormsby approached the churchyard gate, his horse suddenly stopped dead short. Seeing nothing for him to shy at, Frederick gave him a cut with his hunting whip, and pricked him with the spur, but the horse only walked backward. Then he tried coaxing, but with no better success. After that he urged him more violently, until the high-couraged thoroughbred, who had before been given to bolting, and who was besides now in extreme terror from some unknown cause, swerved on one side, and taking the bit between his teeth, made straight for the stone wall that surrounded the churchyard. He rose at the leap, but being unable (perhaps from the effects of his long day’s hunting), to clear it, fell backwards upon his rider. As Ruth Brandon was returning from the blacksmith’s house, she was startled by the galloping tread of a horse, which sped quickly by her. She saw the empty saddle in the moonlight, and feared some accident. A little further on she observed Fairy snuffing curiously some object under the churchyard wall. On going up to it she found it to be the body of a man, in a red coat. In her alarm she cried aloud for help, and some men came out of the neighbouring cottages. Finding that he was not dead, but only unconscious, they carried him into the parsonage. Ruth and her old servant busied themselves about the sufferer, who was laid on a sofa. There was characteristic womanly tenderness in Ruth’s touch, and characteristic observation also in her appraisement of his features. There was a paper clasped tightly in one of the young man’s hands. She gently took it from between his fingers, and thinking it might be of importance to him, put it into his waistcoat pocket. Her touch upon his breast aroused him, and opening his eyes he fixed them upon her. Why did she start at that look ? It was because those eyes were so very like the eyes of the child in Ursula’s room. The doctor who had been sent for to see the old woman, soon arrived, and declared that Ormsby’s arm was broken. The young man was established in a bedroom at the parsonage, and Mrs Brandon, on his return next morning, was a good deal surprised to find this addition to his family. He, however, treated the stranger with the most friendly kindness, and that more especially when he heard who he was. Ormsby, on his side, like his quarters at the parsonage, and Ruth somehow learned to think him quite good-looking. One day Ormsby found in his waistcoat pocket a paper that astonished him. I was written in Italian, and ran as follows : ‘Mr Ormsby, I Usurla Lerma, was the servant of your mother, when she married your father, and went with her to her husband’s house. She died at your birth, and I, who was your nurse, and loved you then better than God and the Virgin, resolved to get rid of your little elder brother, the child of your father’s first English wife, because he stood between you and your father’s fortune. One day, therefore, when 1 was out with that child I left him with a relation of mine, who had no children, and wanted to have a sou. Then I returned, and said that the child, as he slept on the sea shore, was washed away by the waves. Missing, I suppose, the delicate nursing he had been used to, the child, who was sickly, soon afterwards died, and I was grieved at it, for it was not my will to kill him. Now lam an old woman, I repent of this my misdeed, and so, wishing to tell you all, and not knowing where else to find you, am come to Brackinton, hoping that sooner or later, you will visit the house of your fathers. I write this in ease of my death, that this paper may be given you. ‘U.L.’ On talking over this strange paper with his friends, the Brandons, Oimsby came to the conclusion that it must have been what Ruth found in his hand, but how it came into his hand they never could discover. Ruth was silently of opinion that the child she had seen was the spirit of Frederick’s little brother, that the ghost of Ursula had frightened Ormsby’s horse, and had put the paper into Ormsby’s hand. The last act of the old woman before death had been to draw it from beneath her pillow. The paper, as was natural, caused Frederick some trouble of mind. But there was that growing up within him which soon banished all sorrow concerning the past. The first use he made of his arm, when it was sound again, was to put it round Ruth Brandon’s waist. Ruth soon knew why the child spirit had waved towards her the orange blossom.