LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 211, 11 February 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A LETTER OF INTRODUCTION. ( Conceded.') Mrs Rayner was quite overpowered, and wanted Saurin to take up his abode in the house that very night. And when the difficulty about luggage was voted fatal to that plan, she insisted on his becoming a permanent guest on the very next day. * I am so glad that you brought your friend over : a most worthy young man he seems to be, she said to me privately. ‘ He is not my friend ; I know nothing of him,’ I replied, in a tone so unlike my ordinary mild accents, that Mrs Rayner stared. It was bad enough that the mother took the fellow up so warmly ; it was worse that he succeeded so well with the daughter. I had always found Peepie a difficult girl to talk to. She would let you take up subject after subject, and drop it again without helping you to keep it up a bit: it was like playing rackets against a fellow who never strikes the ball in his turn. But with Saurin she laughed and chattered in the most animated way.

* What a pleasant man your friend is,’ she remarked to me, when he had left her for awhile, to wind a little more web round her mother.

1 1 am glad that you like him,’ I untruthfully answered ; ‘ but he is not my friend.’ ‘ Anyhow, he is great fun, ’ said she. But I could not see it.

Saurin likewise approved of Peepie ; at least I am informed that the horrible slangy phrase which he applied to her as I drove him home that night was intended to be complimentary. ‘ Rather a fetching girl that, ’ was his familiar observation. I made no reply. Next day he rose rather in my estimation. I received a letter from Cash, Cross, and Dorser, the great London firm, placing £SOO to the credit of Mr Philip Saurin ; and a balance does make a difference. He looked into the office in the course of the morning, asked whether the money had arrived, and took a cheque-book. That afternoon lie installed himself in Colonel Rayner’s house. In the evening there was a large dinner party, and the new-comer was introduced to several of the county magnates. Ido not think that he succeeded so well with them as he had with the Rayners, who were predisposed in favor of one who brought them a letter of introduction from the son and brother in India, Our landed people are under the impression that all persons who have not the advantage of belonging to the county, should show some sense of that misfortune in a subdued manner; and this young man was decidedly bumptious. He intimated an intention of settling in the neighbourhood, asked if there were any estates in the market, as, if so, he might probably become a purchaser. And when it was remarked in conversation that Sir Peter Snaffles was about to give up the hounds, he said that he should not mind hunting the county himself. Imagine a stranger introduced into the Carlton, and proposing himself incidentally as the leader of the Convative party, and you may form some idea of the effect produced.

‘ Your friend is rather a forward young man,’ was the remark which was several times made to me, and I invariably replied, in tones which showed more and more irritation, that Saurin was not my friend; that he brought a letter of introduction to Colonel Rayner from Charles, and that was all I knew about him. I might have spared my breath and temper —no one heeded me, and as this odious fellow’s sponsor I had to stand —I, whose apetite faded at the thought of his being under the same roof as Peepie ! At the end of a week, he came into the bank one morning, and announced that he had to go to Liverpool on business. ‘Awful bore,’ he said; ‘but it can’t be helped. lam afraid I shall have to go on to Paris, and may not be back here for a couple of months. However, then I shall settle. Sims is in treaty to buy Caw-caw Lodge for me. It won’t make a bad little hunting-box. Hope to see you there, old fellow, and have some jolly evenings. The money for the purchase will be lodged here in a day or two. By-the-bye, I wish you would let me know when it is paid in. He left two addresses, one at Bristol, the other at Paris, with dates when letters were to be sent to either place, and then said good bye; he had only a short time to catch the train. Passing through the outer office, he stopped to draw his balance. ‘ I declare I was nearly starting on my journey without the wheel grease,’ he cried back to me, where I stood at the door of my private room. At that moment a strang -r came in and asked forme. I stepped forward and invited him to enter my room. He was a gentlemanly looking young fellow with a pale face, which was the whiter for a very black moustache.

‘ I think I have an account with you,’ ho said when seated; I directed five hundred pounds to be paid in to my name—Saurin. ‘ Saurin!’ I cried aghast. ‘ Why, he has just left; he was drawing out the money as you came into the office.’ ‘ Oh, I noticed a man who seemed to conceal his face from me very carefully; no doubt the rascal who stole my portmanteau at Marseilles. We had better stop him at once, and explain afterwards. I caught up my hat, and darted off towards tho station, followed by the new Mr Saurin. He had not introduced himself quite so rapidly as it appears on paper, and No 1 Saurin having a fly waiting for him at the door, and the station being more than a quarter of a mile off, he had a good start. The train ran in when we had a couple of hundred yards still to go, and when we reached the station-door it was locked. However, a porter who knew me let us in. I hurriedly explained matters ; and our man was made to descend ignominiously from the carriage in which he had comfortably ensconced himself, and given into custody. It turned out that his real name was Purvis. He had really been in the service once, but had been turned cut of it for dis honourable practices. After that, he had got some clerk’s appointment at Calcutta, and losing it in due course, had returned to England at the same time as Saurin, with whom he had scraped acquaintance. On the journey home, Saurin fell ill with fever, and had to stop at Marseilles, and Purvis was brute enough to take advantage of his helplessness, and steal the portmanteau and desk, which enabled him first to learn his affairs and arrangements, and then to personate him. with a view of getting hold of the five hundred pounds. Luck had favored him immensely. Saurin’s reason for wishing to g > to Sdyje directly he reached England, and for prodding himself

with a letter of introduction to Colonel Earner, from his brother-officer Charles, w.is, that he had set his affections onja young lady whom he had met in India, and who was now residing with her family near Soyle. Had these people been at home, the impostor would have been discovered at once. As it was, he got a clear week; and why he did not make off before, I cannot imagine.

That he did not, saved the bank the better part of five hundred pounds, though, personally, the fellow let me in for that hundred which he was the cause of my promising to the Idiot Asylum. Mrs Rayner tried to get a second hundred out of me, on the plea that I ought to be responsible for ‘ my friend;’ but the colonel interfered for once, and said it was too bad.

My wife—that is Peepie—declares that she saw through the impostor at once, and of course lam bound to believe her. You may do as you like. ♦ AN ADVENTURE IN ST. PAUL’S. We colonials, on the whole, I think, have more appreciation of St Paul’s than of any other of your London sights. More than of Westminster Abbey, even. For it wants a deal of history to understand the Abbey and its puzzling chapels; and after a certain amount of stock driving, one jumbles up the kings and queens. Coming over from Australia for a six month’s visit to England, one of the first things I promised myself on landing was to see St Paul’s ; and yet it’s a singular fact, that up to the very end of. my sojourn here, I had never been inside your (or may I say our ?) great cathedral. I felt it impossible to go back and face my relations and friends, if I couldn’t say that I’d seen St Paul’s, and I made half-a-dozen plans, at various times, of paying it a visit. But first one thing intervened, and then another, till my last day in England had come, my pilgrimage unperformed. This last day, however, I had kept clear of engagements, on purpose to see the place. But before I was out of bed in the morning, I had a telegram of importance, which took me off post-haste to the eastern counties; and it was past eight o’clock in the evening before I reached the Shoreditch station, on my return journey. Now, I was bound to start early next morning, to reach Brindisi in time for the Indian mail, and it thus seemed as if it were my fate to miss my last chance of entering St Paul’s. Still, I was determined not to throw away a chance : it might be that the cathedral was still open ; and I picked out a fast-looking horse from the row of hansoms, and bade the driver put me down in the shortest possible time at the corner of St Paul’s churchyard. As I descended from the cab, and stood on the edge of the pavement looking up at the giant bulk of the dome, the clock struck nine. The sun had set; but high overhead the golden ball and cross stood out against the sky, still burnished by the evening glow. All the lower part of the building was in deep shadow, rendered still darker by the thick coating of soot that encased it; but the upper portion, towering clear of houses and chimneys, and swept and sweetened by the winds and rains, caught a gleam of brightness from the clouds above, and raised itself white and fair into the evening sky. The traffic of the day had slackened; there were few pedestrians, and only an occasional cab rattled by. The big warehouses had retired from business, the shops were shut; the city seemed to sleep. Paul’s also was closely fastened up. It misgave me that all I should see of it would be the outside.

Bending back my neck, and gazing upwards at tbe huge dome, I saw that about the great golden cross and ball was a tracery as of cobwebs, and men like flies were crawling about those filaments. Stout scaffoldings and thick cables, they were, no doubt; but, from the street, they looked like the delicate fabric of the gossamer. I walked quickly round the church, hoping to find some doorway open, some access to the interior. The iron gates were all closed, the doors were fast. Paul’s portals looked as inaccessible and forbidding as the rocky flank of a mountain. I was determined to find my way in, if possible: but I knew not how to set about it. Could I have come across anything rhat looked like a deanery or sacredotal residence, I should have made bold to knock thereat, and ask the occupiers for the key. But I could find nothing of the sort. Even at a bun shop, which was still open, where I enquired as to the way of getting into the church, the people knew no more about St Paul’s than if it had been a thousand miles distant.

I began to feel despondent about the matter, but went round the church once more till I came to the end of the south transept —the shorter limb of the cross, and looked vacantly up at the fine somicular portico, with its tall columns, and flight of steps. All this time 1 never thought of there being anybody living inside St Paul’s; I should as soon have expected to meet with furnished apartments in the Catacombs, or a family residence in the Pyramids. But peering curiously about, I espied, in the angle formed by the nave and transept on the western side, a window, from which came the faint gleam of a candle. I stood, and looked between the railings, and saw that tomebody was moving about within. There was a bii’d-cage in the window; on the sill outside, some red flower-pots. Presently, somebody came to a desk near the window and began to write : an old man with white hair.

If I could only make him see me, perhaps he would take compassion on me, and let mo in. But it wasn’t likely that he should see me. Looking from the lighted room into the twilight outside, it was hardly possible that he should see anything. I thought of flinging a pebble at the window ; but it was a good distance off ; I might break the glass, and be taken into custody. I gave a few shrill whistles, holding my fingers in my mouth ; I even ventured cn a modified version of the Australian ‘ cooee but it was all of no use. The old man didn’t turn his head.

Once again I had almost given the thing up, and gone home ; but just then the light disappeared from tho window, and all was darkness. Was the old man off to bed, I wondered, or had he gone to grope about among the .crypts below ? Should I see his light, presently twinkling iu those high windows ? Did he couch in some stone gallery, or find a resting-place iu the golden hall ? Whilst I was thus speculating, I heard a door softly closed, a footstep on the stone staircase; the iron gate at the bottom creaked on its hinges. I sprang forward, and met a gray-headed old man with a thin pallid face, who was just opening the iron grille. (To "be continued.)