LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 287, 13 May 1875, Page 4

LITERATURE.

AN EVERY-DAY STORY. ( Continued. ) Rosalie’s head drooped, and her breast heaved. She had not thought before, absorbed in her heart’s sweet secret, her mind’s fever, how neglectful she had been of a child’s first duty towards him —her only parent—how wanting in confidence and love. ‘Heaven knows I have no right to be proud—a poor, obscure country clergyman, I dared hope for no exalted lot for you, Rosalie, lovely us you are —the image of your lovely mother. But —Mr Payne is not your equal: and there are other and worse reasons why he cannot aspire to you. ’ ‘ Tell me all, papa,’ she gasped. ‘ Mr Halcroft took her burning hands in his, and told a disgraceful tale. This young Bertram Payne was a gambler. He had (during these few recent weeks of absence) been abroad to where gamblers resort, had won largely, and was come back laden with his gains. ‘lt is not true; I will never believe it,’ she broke out, with painful, passionate vehemence.

‘lt is quite true, Rosalie,’ answered the clergyman, sadly. ‘Y on shall he convinced of it yourself if you will. In one respect the young man is honourable, for he is no liar : when taxed with it by one who had a right to question him, he allowed its truth. My child, you cannot marry a gambler. It is the worst vice, sove one, that man can acquire. ’ ‘No, no, I cannot marry him,’ acquiesced Rosalie, rising up with trembling lips and pallid face. ‘ Papa, for your sake, for all our sakes, I renounce Bertram Payne. ’

So Mr Payne and Miss Halcroft met no more—exceptat church,where his eyes would dwell on her pale face until it burned with feverish crimson beneath his gaze, though her look was turned away in resolute avoidance; or when they encountered in the street, where he lingered to meet her, and flushed and trembled : but she passed on with a cold bow. He was too proud to plead, too remorseful to resent, but she knew by intuition as she sat weeping in her chamber, the passionate words of explanation he wrote, and tore, and flung away, and never sent. ‘ Rosalie, I did it for you. I won to win you; I knew it was the surest road to fortune, and fortune sanctions love. Poor, I could not address you ; rich, I might dare to ask, I never remembered it was a sin, I only remembered your sweet words and lovely looks. I never thought of wrong, I only thought of you—Rosalie,’ Over and over again these or some such words of excuse were gone over in her mind. They were very near the truth. Only—he had not at first staked to win, but only out of idleness, only from example : when he found he was indeed winning—for he had a strange and wonderful run of luck in the German town —lie went on pursuing it, thinking of Rosalie. But, had he explained all this and sued for pardon, what would it have availed against the mild horror of the Christian minister, or the fiei’ce virtue of the village gossips ; least of all the shocked pride of his beloved ? To her maidenly inexperience, the sin of gambling looked so very dark and horrible. The Reverend Mr Halcroft held an interview with the offender, and there and then cut the cord of the past —and with it the heart’s life of his daughter. Poor Rosalie, striving her best for outward composure, could but weep and droop, and grow more listless daj by day, and wring her father’s heart with useless sorrow. At last, despairing of his own treatment, and doubting his knowledge of womanly nature, he wrote a long letter to his sister, Mrs Haydh, and begged her to advise him what to do for his daughter in the case he described.

Mi's Haydn arrived herself in answer. A handsome, rich, fashionable, prosperously married woman, with a talent for management. She came primed with much excellent advice; but was startled at the first sight of Rosalie’s beaty. The flexible, graceful shape, the stately little head, the oval face, with hair, eyes, brows and lashes of the same rare shade, the lips of delicate red, the

pretty smile and clear pallor of complexion, were all marked with the keen eye of a connoisseur ; and she hastened to charge herself with the care of Rosalie’s future, and assure her brother that, with a proper education, his daughter had all the requisites for making a great sensation in society, and eventually a splendid match; none the worse qualified by this early experience of a foolish fever. It did not hinder girls’ prospects, she said, or cause them to make less good wives.

She took Rosalie back with her to her home in town. Having no children of her own, the charge was pleasant rather than otherwise. Once there, she caused the girl to be provided with the best of masters, and gave her herself the best of training—for a fashionable life. Close upon this, the Reverend Mr Halcroft had a living given him quite unexpectedly near town, and re moved to it : so that all associations with the old home were severed for Rosalie. ‘So much the better, ’ said Mrs Haydn. Thus passed three years. At nineteen, Rosalie was introduced into society by her aunt, to become at once its loveliest ornament, and achieve all the success that had been promised for her by \anquishing a somewhat stern gentleman and great match, Mr Linden, who had hitherto been held to be impregnable. Accustomed to be courted beset, in fact—Rosalie’s cold indifference piqued him, her rare beauty charmed him ; and he soon found himself as violently in love as it was possible for a man of his temperament to be. ' Left to herself, Miss Halcroft might have declined him, for not an atom of love for him touched her heart; but Mrs Haydn was imperative, and as good as settled things for her. Decline Mr Linden ! —the best match of the season ! no, no ; that would never do. And Rosalie, who had learnt to appreciate the good things of this world that the gods provide for lucky people, accepted him. At twenty she became M”s Linden. Then succeeded a life of* placid elegance, of luxurious ease. For the first time in her experience every exquisite taste could be delighted, every delicate sense gratified, and all her desires and wishes fulfilled. All ? Was there no yearning in her heart that her husband’s calm kindness could not satisfy ? no chamber in her soul that his self-com-placent image could not fill ? Who knew what had become of the poor prodigal, Bertram Payne, who lost honour, happiness, and reputation for her sake ? —the ruined boy who, even in his one first bitter abasement, has been too proud to seek her pity by word or sign from that day, and of whom she had no token all these years. Time passed. Mrs Linden had no children. She did a great deal for her young brothers, and loved them much.

Five years later the Rev Arthur Halcroft died of a lingering malady, a kind of decline. His dearly beloved daughter was everything to him ; and he caused her to promise that his remains should be taken down to the churchyard of that first parsonage of his, Hayford, and laid to repose by the side of his wife. Rosalie trembled and wept as she promised this ; but she wept much at that time. In the end, she was too ill to go on the sad journey, but remained at home, weeping hysterically, feeble and feverish, and shivering at the very name of Hayford, as they noticed for many wet ks. But her grief wore itself out in time; she reappeared in society, rarely beautiful in her black robes, and arranged to go down with her husband to visit Hayford during the next summer, and see to the grave. But, when the appointed time for the journey came, Mr Linden was himself ill. Rosalie would have again put her visit off, but an architect was to meet her at Hayford to receive instructions for a monument in the church ; and so she started alone, taking her carriage and servants. Mr Linden insisted on that ; it would be more comfortable for her, he thought. Halting at a town conveniently near, she drove the next morning to Hayford. Her pale face looked forth wistfully from the carriage windows, but she could recognise familiar features only in the landscape, not in the changed objects near home. Hayford had ceased to be a quiet, rural village, and become a bustling “ terminus the railroad had revolutionized everything. Handsome brick buildings had replaced the primitive old shops ; a fine hotel had usurped the site of tire homely inn ; and showy modern villas and cottages ornes appeared everywhere. The time-worm dwellings she had known as a child seemed to have disappeared. Those that remained were tricked out with new paint and plaster, pillared porticoes and deep bay windows, Venetian blinds and Italian shades. Even the old school-house past which she had so often wandered, learning logic in the light of Bertram Payne’s beautiful eyes, was transformed into a dashing ‘ Hayford College. ” Sick at heart, she drove to the new hotel, left her carriage and servants there, and set out on foot to visit in private her father and mother’s grave. She had feared to find the church and cemetery unrecognizable, perhaps even the parsonage gone ; but the changes that had revolutionized the village higher up had not not extended so far as this. The familiar houses, embowered in old-fashioned shrubberies ; the dark stone church, with its ‘ white harvest-fields of dead’ stretching around and beyond it ; the low-browed parsonage, hidden by royal elms; the dear old grassy lanes, the little white gate between the laurels; all were there, untouched by change. Continuing her way, scarcely pausing to look at the old house, she gained the solitary churchyard, and stood in the dark and sheltered corner of it that contained the grave : giving way for some time to her grief. . Then other memories crowded upon her mind; the past, with all its sweetness, all its sadness, came back once more, not as a vague pain, a half-forgetten vision, but a living truth, a vivid reality, to which all these dear and well-remembered scenes bore silent witness. She had fancied that this page in her life was for ever turned, her suffering stilled, her peace found; but in that lonely hour, among those solemn shades, it stood confessed a living presence yet, whose content was stupor, whose repose was death. And she burst into sobs of passionate agony.

Some movement aroused her. Was she dreaming—deceived by her disordered senses ? Or was it a spirit who stood there —in form and face wonderfully beautiful as when they had last parted ? Long mourned, long wept, long pitied, had the strong yearning of his old beloved called him from some fresh or distant grave to meet at the tryst ing-place ? For, not having heard of Bertram Payne for all these years, she had deemed him death No, it was no spirit. A spirit would not have breathed her name,

“ Rosalie”—would not have sprung forward to meet her ; then, putting a visible constraint on voice and face, suddenly checked the eager impulse, though she could hear the rapid beating of his heart. To be continued.