LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 209, 9 February 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

AN OLD MAN'S DARLING. In Two Chapters. (Concluded.) 'And can this fine young woman really be the little thing I met in the churchyard ; and who drew sixpenny cheques on the Hawkshaw bank without having a balance!' said the doctor, when the first greetings were over. ' I have developed, Uncle Gregory; that is all. But how nice and quick your ship has been; we did not expect you before Wednesday at the earliest.' • I have come overland,' replied Dr Antrobus. * After I had written my last letter, one of our party, a Frenchman, asked me to go, on to Paris with him to give certain evidence which he wanted, promising that I should not be delayed in the long run. And he has kept his word, you see.' If Ethel had thought of it she would have quietly gone out of the room, and told the servant to explain to Dudley when he came what had happened, so that he might see the advisableness of not intruding upon the master of the house in the first moments of his arrival. But in the surprise and excitement she forgot all about her lover till he was announced, and then it was too late. Seeing a stranger in the room Dudley paused near the door, till Ethel said: ' This is Dr Antrobus, Richard;' when he advanced and bowed. Dr Antrobus did not return his salute. He had risen from his chair when the door opened, and now he stood erect, frowning and surprised. •Who is that man?' he asked, in quick commanding tones, such as neither Granny nor Ethel had ever heard from him before. «That is Mr Dudley,' said the old lady, much distressed. ' Don't you know? Don't you remember?' ' What are you doing here?' continued the doctor, not heeding. • Sir!' said the young man, flushing red. ' What have you done with your wife ?' At that question the colour faded out of Dudley's cheeks, and the anger out of his eyes. Ethel looked from one man to the other in astonishment; she thought her guardian had gone mad, till she heard the other's astounding reply: ' I had —the misfortune—to—lose her, he stammered. 4 Murderer !' cried the doctor. Dudley felt the extreme folly of allowing himself to be cowed and confused ; but the whole thing had come so suddenly upon him that he was utterly unable to pull himself together, even sufficiently for bluster. ' Is not one victim sufficient for you ?' continued Dr Antrobus. ' I don't know what you mean,' said Dudley, with an effort. • Then I will tell you. I have no wish to speak in enigmas.—Ethel, this man who has sought you in marriage has already had a wife. She was much older than himself, but she was rich ; so he took her abroad, yatching ; carefully got rid of all and poisoned her.' ' Who and what are you, who dare utter these calumnies!' cried Dudley, finding a courage in desperation at last. ' I am the man who saw your victim in your absence, off the coast of Sicily; who met you on the deck of your own yacht when you returned—do you not remember me? who would have saved her, if not too late, and brought you to punishment, had not the rising wind enabled you to fly.' ' I did not fly; I left for change of air, because my wife was worse. She was not in her right mind; you were imposed upon by the ravings of a mad. woman.' 'God forbid that I should condemn any man unheard, however much appearances might be against him. But your wife was dying when I saw her, from the effects of a Eoison I can name, and that poison was in er food. I secured a portion, and analysed it. Who attempted her fife, if you did not? Who else had interest in her death ■?.' ' I—l do not believe she was poisoned at all, I—l——. Prove it, prove your •lander.' The doctor waited for a while to hear if he had anything further to say, and then he raised his right arm, and pointed to the door.

'Out of my house, assassin,' he said. ' The vengeance of man may fail to reach you, but the justice of God is sure.' And Dudley slunk from the house. The doctor turned round: Granny was lying on the sofa in hysterics ; Ethel stood erect, pale as death, and trembling in every limb".

'l.would have spared you this scene, my dear child, if I could,' said he, taking her by the hand; ' but perhaps, it is best as it is' -'.

' 0 yes !' she replied. She had read Dudley's guilt in his face. Dr Antrobus found out the. .murdered woman's relatives, and communicated with them, and they desired to prosecute; but the lawyers decided that there was no legal evidence, unless the body could be discovered, and as it had, in all probability, been committed to the sea, this was impossible. So Dudley escaped, and it was years before they heard of him again. But he had gorged the hook of the devil, who only gave him line for a time. The stings of conscience drove him to dissipation, dissipation brought him to want, want to further crime, and though he cheated the gallows, he was condemned to penal servitude for life. All Hawkshaw knew of Ethel's engagement to Dudley, and the girl chafed under the general complacent sympathy, expressed or understood, so that her spirit and health suffered. The doctor observed this, and moved to London, where she in time got over the shook; but she was no longer the same for him. If it had not been for that two years' absenoe, he might have felt towards her like a relative to the end of the chapter. As it was, he, who had flattered himself that he was above such sentiment-** nonsense, fell in love with her. There -amid be no mistake about it; her figure pursued him everywhere, in the laboratory, in tne dissecting-room, on the mountain-side. Worst sign of all. when young men made themselves agreeable to her, he felt a pang of jealousy; and when, as happened twice m three years, she rejected good offers, he felt glad, and not sorry. r At the end of those three years Granny 'died, and the doctor felt in a very awkward position; he did not know what to do with 'this ward, whom he was in love with. t So he cut the Gordian knot by tying smother; I mean, that he married her. ■ It came about very simply. I «xwish, my dear, I was just twenty years (younger;' he,said,one day* «Wbyf fitbel afl]pd,_ . _.

'Because, then we should be about of an age, and I could ask you to be my wife.' ' I don't like boys.' 'Wise girL "Better be an old man's darling than a young man's snarling." There is rhyme and reason in the proverb, though snarling, as a noun, is a poetical license.' ' The idea of your calling yourself an old man !' said Ethel, when all was satisfactorily arranged. 'Past forty, my love, past forty. Fancy taking the complaint so late in life !' Ethel went to the piano, and sang: Forty times over let Michaelmas pass; Grizzling hair the brain doth clear. Then you know a boy and ass, Then you know the worth of a lass, Once you have come to forty year. Ethel herself is nearly forty now, and the doctor is sixty; and up to this date neither has once regretted what some kind friends called at the time their ill-assorted union. ♦ A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION. / Soyle is the capital of one of the smallest counties in England; it is an assize town, and our funny man (0 yes, we have one; he once sent a joke to Punvh.') asserts on every opportunity, that the persons who conferred that honor upon it were very bad judges of a size. The population, indeed, only consists of two thousand inhabitants, and I am one of them : as junior partner in the bank, open on ordinary' occasions from eleven to three, and on market-days from ten to five, I may add, an important one of them. Our street is broad, our shop-windows beautiful, the red bear which squats ' begging' (as if for custom) over the portico of our principal inn is of gigantic size, and, as a work of art, unique. Yet the passing stranger might think us dull. He would, however, be mistaken: the assizes are followed by a ball; the militia training is followed by a ball; the hunting season is closed by a ball; and there is an annual county ball. Four balls in .the year! On these occasions, the Red Bear, on whose premises the assembly-rooms are situated, is full, overflowing into beds out; but generally strangers are scarce, unless you except the bagmen, who make themselves at home everywhere, and are never really strangers—all the world's their shop, and all the men and women merely buyers. It was different in the days of''coaches (not so distant as you may imagine), for then travellers on their way to the picturesque country twenty miles further on, would often sojourn with us for a night; pedestrian tourists almost invariably did so. Now they all pass us by in the railway trains without notice, unless some lover of architecture cries out: ' What a fine old church for such a pokey little place !' . . ~, Of course we have dinner and other private parties; but the only public enter tainment provided for Soyle and its environs, besides the balls, is a billiard-room, also attached to the beneficent Red Bear. Here there is a pool every afternoon, from three till halfpast five or thereabouts. In the evening the room is full of bagmen and tradesmen of the place, so the gentry never enter it after dinner. There is no great disadvantage, for most of them live from two to five miles off. The doctor, indeed, has a house in the actual town, the vicar (who, however,' does hot indulge in pool) resides within a stone's-throw of the church, and I have to lodge at.the bank; but we are exceptions.

I hope that no one will be shocked; I know that all games of billiards are looked upon with dread by many an anxious mother, and that more than one respectable gentleman, who would rather forego his dinner than allow the balance at his banker's to sink below three figures, would frown at the idea of that banker making a habitof attending at a board of green cloth every afternoon. But, really, we are not fast. Colonel Rayner, if ever he had any wildoats, had sown them long before his crop of white hairs. :came; Mr Rice, chairman of the board of magistrates, never shows any desire, like Shakspeare's beadle, to do those things for which- he punishes others; Captian Woodwall, R.N., has. lost all bad naval habits, except an occasional hasty interjection, with his. left leg;. Mr Long, of model-farm celebrity, is as innocent as one of his own fat bullocks;. Dr Keane is respected by all except the rabbits and frogs which come into his experimental hands, and if he has a secret penchant, it is merely for manslaughter; Mr Ricktus indulges in punning, but that his only vice. If you observe that it had need be, I do no£ contradict you. There are several others, who occasionally drop into the billiard 7 room—men generally engaged in hunting, or shooting, or fishing, or who only reside .in > the neighbourhood for a portion of some of these may have reprehensible inclinations, but if so, they repress them, overawed by the virtue of the ; AaJir*«. ; Of these latter, I am the youngest, and used till lately, to pass, therefore* as the most frolicsome. Yet" I was, and am, "the slowest of the slow. The school at which I was educated was conducted on Pestalozzian principles; the. private tutor who had charge of my adolescence, for I never w«it to college, was a mild clergyman. I have had no fiery ordeal to go through, and do hqt particularly regret the fact. It seems to me that all young men who have been ' wild* suffer from debt and indigestion. \ One wet afternoon last autumn We had a very full meeting; three dog>cart&*and a twowheeled omnibus stood under the shed in the yard of the Bed Bear as I passed through it on my way to the bank; and six players., were assembled in the billiard-room, soma, taking their cues from the boxes in-which they were kept securely locked, others chalking the tops; »U preparing for the combat in some w?y or other, except Mr Rice, whose age, trembling hand, and gouty toe unfitted hhn for playing himself, tb<wg!» h« took sreat delight in criticising the performof others from the raised seat which he occupied, and at times, when the chances were considerably in his favour, staking sixpence on the division of this and that competitor. Joe the marker gave out the ball* ; he was but a lad, and his voioa was cracking; indeed, ho had beta * chorister till Jatejy. but the. failure of hUI organ had unfroclrtd. ihim. 'Red plays upon white, he squeaked but in a shrill treble. 'Yellow's his player/ha added in a gruff bass. j Red was Captain Woodwall, who balanced himself on his leg of flesh, while the timber one stuck out stiffly behind him,and dribbled his ball up to the white with that care which the commencement of every enterprise demands. 'Yellow on red' (bass). 'Green's his player'(treble). . , (To b« continvii.)