LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 288, 14 May 1875, Page 4

LITERATURE.

■ * —■ AN EVERY-DAY STORY.. ( Concluded',) Her own beat scarcely less rapidly, and a film came over her eyes. But the instinct of custom and propriety triumphed over the transient tumult, and she stood before him in a moment, calm and majestic, outwardly the elegant, fashionable woman, Mrs Linden; but inwardly feeling all the impassioned love of the girl Rosalie of ten years before surging in her breast as she gazed. They spoke little, and neither named the past—the past as regarded themselves, Mrs Linden told him her errand there—to look at her father’s grave. ‘ I come here also,’ said Mr Payne; * come here often, Mr Halcroft was my dear friend, my only comforter for years. He led me back to the right path ; through him I lived down that mistake of my early life, and became what I am—honoured and respected.’ ‘Your friend—when?’ she asked, in involuntary surprise. ‘As soon as you had left. He sought me out. ’

* And you did not seek me out!’ all but fell from her lips. He read it in her eyes; read the reproach,

‘ He said it must not be ; that you were lost to me for ever. I could not go against him, Rosalie.’ They wandered restlessly on, not daring to linger where nothing must be said, or wild emotions recalled, each heart too full for the pretence of ordinary speech. They remembered how last they had strolled down this lane together, silently as now, but encircled by an atmosphere of invisible enchantment, trembling with fearful happiness, burning with hidden devotion, and neither daring by words to dissolve the spell of the sweet embarrassment that bound them. Now—with those worn and wasted hearts, those heavy eyes, those weary feet, those lives from which all bright illusions and charmed dreams had departed before cold and stern realities—what mockery it seemed to wander in the dear old lane! What a bitter travesty of lovers’ walks for them —a sobered man, a saddened woman —to tread the green, familiar path their feet had worn ten years ago, in the sweet spring-time of their early love!

He broke the silence of their sad thoughts first. ‘You are married, Rosalie ?’ he said: for this was no time for conventionalities or to call her by any name but the one so familiar to his lips. ‘Yes.’ ‘ And you have children ? ’ ‘ None.’ ‘ I have one, I—l named her after you. I sometimes fancy there is a resemblance to —that her smile and her eyes are like yours: her hair is the same shade. Will you—will you come in with me and see my wife and child?’ A moment’s pause ; but the sweet fascination of that pleading voice lay upon her as of yore, and she yielded to it. ‘Yes, Bertram, I will go in with you.’ It was close by the parsonage, as near as might be to the Mecca of his thoughts—a lovely cottage-villa, such as long ago she had seen in her dreams, hidden in a blossoming wilderness of vines and flowers and drooping trees. The world had prospered with Mr Payne; relatives had died and enriched him; and tt is, his home, was beautiful. An over-dressed, common-place woman sat in the room she entered, and was introduced as ‘My wife, Mrs Payne. ’ How she, and the name, and the ‘ wife’ all struck and jarred on Rosalie’s nerves, she remembered for many a long day. Mr Payne brought up to her a sweet child of two years old, whom he called Baby Rose: a pretty, delicate flower, who certainly had somewhat of the elder Rosalie’s look about her. Sitting down, he took her on his knee, holding her lovingly to him while they talked. Rosalie had leisure to impress it all upon her memory; while the mother settled her flounces, arranged her laces, passed her jewelled hands over her hair, and scrutinized the mourning robes of her guest. Mrs Payne entered on a gossiping history of the present doings of the neighbourhood, to which until her marriage she had been a stranger. He listened in silence—possibly contrasting bitterly the two women—pressing his child’s soft cheeks to his, caressing her golden hair; bending his proud head to catch her sweet whispers, with the lovelight Rosalie knew so well shining in those wonderful eyes, under their drooping lashes, upon his little daughter, whose innocent caresses kept his soul alive. She watched it all. Never had Bertram Payne seemed to her so beautiful, so dear; her whole heart went out towards him, as he bent over his baby’s face. There was a look of suffering and conquest upon his brow; lines of pain and struggle were graven deeply there—marks of sorrow past, of combat won, that purified and ennobled his features beyond their mere beauty. He seemed to her partial and yet experienced eyes the type of the ideal for which her girlish heart had pined, which her womanly soul had yearned for all these years. Pure, faithful, fond, there he sat in her sight, crowned with his perfect manhood, and worthy of her love as she had dreamed he was so many weary years before. The thoughts of those years came back to her as she sat; even the very words that she had then longed to go and pour forth to him in what she took to be his shame and his sin. ‘ Though the whole world forsake you, Bertram, I am true; though you be stained and shameful, I will weep you clean; though jou may be deserted, I will cling to you; though you be despised, 1 will honour you; though you be ruined, I will exalt you ; though none else may, with, all my heart, and soul, and being, I will worship you still, my adored, my prince, my lord ! ’ Ah, the foolish enthusiasm of our youth ! It was all over now, however, and they sat there under the cares and the realities of the world, cold-mannered, cautious, as the world’s best men and women.

And what were Ms thoughts ? She could not tell, but her imagination pictured them as perhaps they were. There could be no mistake that his love for her was still fresh and green ; that he would give much to be able to clasp her innocently for one single moment to his aching heart. Mr Payne raised his drooping eyes, and met hers, with a long, long yearning look. It seemed to tell her all the past. The days of childish heartbreak, the nights of sleepless pain, the perpetual feverish longings, the constant burden of despair. And then the gradual stupor of patience ; the numb indifference, the cold langour that followed ; succeeded at length by the life of calm repose, of gliding ease and polished luxury, of half-satislied content, of real indifference : the whole somewhat of a dream, a trance, a sleep. Yes, yes, they read each other well.

The lady in the arm-chair saw nothing of this emotion ; she was quite unconscious of being the third party in a scene, the spectator to a silent, sad drama of memory. Having talked to her satisfaction, and , twirled her bracelets and her rings while doing it—not unconsciously, in the absence of a pre-occupied mind—she called her daughter to come to her: papa had nursed her long enough. He carried his child across the rug, and put her on her mother’s knee. Rosalie watched it all. She saw her hold.it in her arms where his had been, and press her lips on the brow still warm with his kisses. Alas! the child was hers —she had the right to do all this. Mrs Linden rose to end her visit, Bertram Payne went out to see her as far as the gate. The sun was shining. The hour of brief delirium was over : it had seemed like delirium to Rosalie. Whatever their inward feelings might be, they must be hidden from the world and from each other. The phantom of the elderly and precise James Linden'; the spectre of the fussy, showy woman in the magnificent lounging chair, rose between

them, forbidding any reference to the past, confining speech to reason and reality. ‘ Shall I see you again ?’ asked Mr Payne. ‘ I fear not. The architect is to meet me presently : he may be already at the hotel. And then I leave again. ’ ‘ Good bye, Mrs Linden.’ * Good bye, Bertram. ’ Their hands met. Once more his glance rested on her pale, perfect face ; once more her look was lifted to his beautiful eyes in a mute farewell. Then the hands unclasped, and they parted, to meet never more, in all probability, in this short-sighted world. For their paths in it lay wide apart. Hers in the gay and bustling area of what is called town life ; his in his secluded home in the remote country district of Hayford. There are more aching hearts, more lives marred by mistakes and disappointments than some of us think for. But we see them not.