LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 300, 29 May 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

TOLD ON CHRISTMAS EVE.

( Continued.)

Aurelius Silver was a stern-looking man, with a face such as one sees on an old Roman medal, and thick masses of sparkling silver hair clustering round his lofty brow. One could imagine him that Roman who gave his son, fresh from a glorious victory, to the sword of the executioner. His eagle eyes took in the agitation of Charles and Daisy at a glance: he saw how it was ; and in his bitter anger, suppressing his furious passion, he stole away, to give vent to that passion out of doors, and to think.

The lovers had not perceived|him. Charles, indeed, was wholly taken up with Daisy. Never had he seen her like this before—and he resented it: resented her want of confidence in him. It is true that he could not speak to any purpose—for he was not sure how events might turn out, or that Daisy could be his ; and he was not one to fly in the face of a father’s mandate. All that kept him from speaking. A sharpish quarrel ensued.

* Listen to me, Daisy,’ he said at length. ‘ I cannot help myself just now, I am not my own master ; but you may be sure ” No, she would not listen. Passion overmastered her. She tore the little brown fingers from his grasp; and, with an inarticulate cry of emotional rage, sprang through the open window and fled out into the moonlight. Charles would not go after her. His first thought was of Violet. “ I hope they’ll not meet,’ he said to himself, as he stood outside the glass doors. ‘ They might come to an issue if they did, in Daisy’s present temper. What in the world possesses her ?’ At that moment, as he looked out across the moonlit lawn, it seemed as though a cry came to his ears from the direction of the lake. He listened; but it was not repeated. And just then Violet came swiftly towards him from an opposite direction, tall and white as a spirit, in her fluttering, misty dress. Chapter 11. AIT RE VOIR. Mr Silver, in his icy rage, strode out into the moonlight at a sharp pace, taking the direction of the lake. The scene he had just witnessed, the knowledge that had burst upon him, filled his whole soul with the intensest wrath. For years and years it had been his darling wish to see his son and niece united: not more for the sake of uniting the large fortune of the Brothers Silver, than because he so loved Violet. He loved his son with a great love, and he coveted Violet for him. There had been another son once, but he “ was notone many years older than Charles : Charles alone remained to him, and on him was concentrated all his affection. Just at the point when success had crowned his wishes—for his brother Arnold had, this very self-same evening, given consent to the marriage—it was maddening to find his airy fabric of Hope dashed to the ground by the glancing wing of the bright little creature who had flitted so inopportunely across his path, “ Why,” he said to himself, as his black shadow swiftly traversed the pearly light, bathing the emerald slope of the lawn, “ I could crush her with a touch ! And yet I foresee as exhausting a conflict with her as with a simoom in the desert, and perhaps as hopeless. Charles, too ! But I don’t so much blame him. She has bewitched him. I wish she had never come here !”

A grim smile darkened, rather than brightened, his majestic face, and he closed his iron lips until - the fine curves of the resolute mouth were lost in one firm bar, as unyielding as death itself. Onwards he strode, his step fiercer and more fierce. ‘Daisy Leighton must be got rid of,’ he continued, silently. * I have never yielded a jot of my will yet to mortal, and it would be strange, indeed, if the folly of a boy and girl should turn me aside from the purpose of my life—that of joining the house and fortune of my brother with my own. Yes; I must disclose to Arnold what I have discovered, and get him to appoint some other home for her, ’

A narrow path led him through the grove of willows to the border of the lake. It was darker here; the trees hid the moon. Mr Silver was no longer angry. He had taken his rage by the throat and planted his foot upon it, after the fashion he had followed with Fate itself in his busy life. He was even a little amused with himself for his brief passion. ‘ One would almost imagine it a thing of consequence,’ he said to himself; ‘ the poor yoimg simpletons! It is only boy and girl fancy.’ Pushing aside the screen of drooping willow boughs, he was about to step downwards on the little beach, glistening with its golden sand under the moonbeams, when, as though stung by an adder, he drew back into the impenetrable shade of the clustering trees, amid which his face gleamed as though hewn from ivory. All his fierce anger had gathered again, its intensity nearly paralysing him. But for that, he would immediately have revealed himself): his haughty spirit spurned the idea of spying on the actions of others.

A light boat trembled on the edge of the water lower down, partially shaded by the overhanging willow-branches. In it stood a man, young and handsome, who was pushing it out from the shore. As Mr Silver looked, it freed himself from the tiny beach, and tossed on the long, purple, voiceless swell of the lake. The man turned his dark, handsome face, his lustrous eyes, to the shore. * Good-bye, my love !’ he said in a low and cautious voice ; and a white-robe girl kissed both her hands to him, her deep eyes radiant, her rosy lips quivering and smiling. It was Violet Silver.

‘Aw revoir; not good-bye,’ she whispered. * Go—oh, go ! I think I hear footsteps.’

She turned and fled quickly towards the house, her golden hair and her white dress drifting out behind her like a vapour. And the man, with a long, powerful stroke of his oar, swept along under the bank; and, turning the sharp curve there, was lost to sight. Aurelius Silver drew a heavy breath, which almost seemed to tear the muscles of his vast chest; and, with the port of a Caesar defied by rebellious Helots, parted the screen of willows and stepped out on the fairy beach, baring his lofty brow as he did so to the freshening wind, which was stealing across the lake, leaving footprints of faintest foam as it came. A complication had arisen which, in one glance, he saw could hardly fail of ruining his hopes, unless indeed his action was prompt, vigorous, and—unsparing. And of all men who ever tore the golden prize from the hand of Fortune, Aurelius Silver knew how to be unsparing to others and to himself. He had rarely done a generous deed, but he had never done a dishonorable one. Some natures resemble masses of grim rock threaded with veins of gold, but to the cold walls of which no tender parasite clings, no vine of beauty connects them with the warmth and sunshine of human life. Mr Silver neither gave nor expected sympathy. He had his virtues; but they were of the high Roman sort. He was honorable, he was temperate, he was courageous. The hidden fire which lurks in man, as in nature, was there, but it neither brightened his life nor that ofothers.

‘ So! ’ he said, with a deep breath. ‘ Violet also 2 ’

The expression of his face boded but little good towards the girl. She was the only creature he had permitted himself to love, Charles excepted; and for the very reason that she was dear to him, he absolutely hated her in this moment, when he found her young spirit had freed itself from the shackles of his will.

Turning to the left, he walked along the edge of the bank. The strip of beach below dwindled to a mere golden thread. The lake was very deep just here. Aurelius Silver glanced back at his brother’s house. Against the lights in the drawing-room beyond the rose garden, the fountain threw up its diamond spray; and, against it again, a little black form seemed to be rushing down frantically like a phantom. It was Daisy Leighton. She was coming towards where Mr Silver stood ; and all his dreadful anger was again aroused as he recognised her.

It all passed in a moment. Whether the girl could not stop herself in time; whether her foot slipped at the bank’s edge ; or whether in her uncontrollable passion she flung herself forward, could not be told ; but there she was, in the lake below, just beneath Aurelius Silver.

One wild cry, one glimpse of her ghastly little face and flashing eyes; one short, sharp struggle with the treacherous water; and then all was still as before, save that widening rings of silver chased each other out across the lake, and drove its waters lapping in sudden life over the belt of sand. A mighty shudder ran through the vast frame of Aurelius Silver. He was a strong swimmer ; what ailed him that he had no effort to save the distraught child from the grave she had fallen into ? In that moment, a demon spoke to his soul. “ Oh, man, why trouble thyself ? Fate has crushed this one obstacle out of thy path. Make her evil thy good.’

Was there a despairing voice abroad, sighing through the pines and across the purple, silver-crested swells of the lake, sighing over the sudden fall of him who had walked well amongst men from the high throne of his boasted honor? Were the stars changed to orbs of fire and blood, as his burning eyes turned towards them ? With his silver hair lifting itself stifly from his head, with a hand of fire grasping his heart, with eyes that saw and ears that heard not, Aurelius Silver turned away from the lake. Chapter 111. “ LORD, KEEP MV MEMORY GREEK ! ” An old stone house standing outside a town at least a hundred miles away from the beautiful summer villa of Arnold Silver. A house standing back from the highway and flanked with great dark trees, old and weirdlooking as those in Gustave Dore’s picture of the “Hewing of the Cedars for the Temple.” The mansion itself lay square, massive, low-browed; its walls were of granite, with that faint suggestion of rose and aqua-marine flowing through the stone, which renders some of those old buildings so mellow and picturesque. The windows were small and formal; the chimneys, standing up against the sky, cowled and hooded like hermits on a mountain top ; and from the great eaves, giant lances of diamond, the handiwork of the fairy armourer King Frost, were hanging like the spears of Titans in some enchanted land. A carriage-drive swept round from the great gates of sombre bronze to the stone step, guarded on either side by a stone lion couchant, of an amiable, not to say benevolent aspect. A hall-door of polished oak stood hospitably open in the winter’s sun. This was the home of the elder brother, Aurelius Silver. It was the custom of the two families to spend the winter together here, and the summer at the villa of the younger, Arnold, But they had quitted the villa earlier than usual this year. There was a certain night in August that had struck its inmates with perplexity, if not terror. Margaret Leighton —or Daisy, as they fondly called her—had disappeared. After a quarrel with Charles —he had confessed to that—she tore from him in a little tempest of fury. Only to the garden, as he supposed, to cool herself by the fountain, or amid the roses : but she had never come back again. From that mysterious hour she had disappeared. Charles and Violet had remained together in the drawing-room talking ; talking, and waiting for her to make her appearance ; how long they scarcely knew. But she did not come. Mr Arnold Silver had gone to rest straight from the dinner-table that night, not being well. Mr Silver (Aurelius) had chanced to take a long country walk that night: the night was so fine that it had tempted him, he told them when he came in—and that was not until close upon midnight. Where was Daisy, they asked him—for Charles and Violet had taken up the notion that the two absent ones must be strolling about together. Daisy ? retorted Mr Silver, at the question—what should he know about Daisy ? . But that he caught up some alarm in regard to her was evident, for his face turned strangely pale, mrt 1 , • .7

To he continued.