LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 304, 3 June 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

SNOW STAYED. In Two Chapters. ( Continued.) This introduction being effected, Helen took a seat, while Mr Hilton remained standing, in no way bashful, but so very pre-occupied .with dead subjects, as to leave the living to take care of themselves. As soon as she dared, Helen raised her eyes and glanced at him. ‘ Unmistakably tall, lean, and grizzled,’ she thought; ‘ but not quite so bad as I expected. Good eyes, if they could be brought to look about him, instead of into remoteness. Good features, but tumbled hair, all falling about anyhow, as if no one ever smoothed it. What a pity he shuts himself up.’ Dinner was announced, and Mrs Hilton said, ‘ Will you let Robert take you into dinner, my dear !’ You must excuse me joining you, but I am obliged to live by rule. Now, Robert, take care of her.’ Thus saying she strove to draw them together, a most thankless task, for Helen hung on to the reluctant arm by the tips of her fingers with an amount of nervousness which made the well-nigh chronic blush on her face turn deep crimson. They sat down to table in solemn silence. Mr Hilton, from the force of habit, turned to find his place in the imaginary volume at his side, and then remembered he had a human book sitting near it might be worth his while perusing. He glanced up, searched for words, aud came to a dead pause; for what on earth was there to talk about. Young women were a genus he had never studied since university days ; they were a study he had shelved with dress clothes, as being ‘terribly out of his line, ’ thinking of the time of the truth of St Chrysostom’s definition of women, who pronounces them, one and all, to be ‘a necessary evil, a natural temptation, ajdesirable calamity’—here he paused, for he declined thinking the present ‘ calamity ’ sitting near at all ‘ desirable ;’ quite the reverse— 4 a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted ill. ’ Ah, yes; Chrysostom was a man of sense and experience, evidently. Poor Helen was equally miserable ; sipped her soup, to prolong the necessity for keeping her head lowered. ‘ One of us must begin,’ she thought; ‘this silence is overpowering.’ At last— ‘ L think you know my friends, the Narcots ?

* Slightly,’ he replied, putting his elbows on the table while waiting to be further fed. He was of that rare order of men who eat, asking no questions, anything put before them. Just the sort of man, women, with a view to a comfortable hereafter in housekeeping, ought to cultivate above all others. * They are very nice girls,’ she remarked. * Possibly. I know nothing about girls.’ * You don’t visit much, I think?’ she again ventured.

‘ No ; I am thankful to say I find something better to do,’ and he pushed the unkept hair from’ his forehead, and closed his eyes, as if to clear the brain of the disturbing possibility of such a fate, of which the present was a taste not at all to his liking. The servant placed a dish before him, which excused them for again lapsing into happy silence. Thus the dinner passed off, save for a few spasmodic attempts at conversation like the previous. And at the finish, never were two people so glad to get rid of each other as Helen Cameron and her extraordinary companion. Mr Hilton did not appear again that night, although he usually kept his mother company for a portion of every evening, after a fashion.

Helen gave him up as hopeless. She had failed to win the least courtesy from him ; and there are few things a woman resents like a tacit avowal that she is powerless to attract. The two weary dajs, each worse than the other for dreariness, came to an end at last. With a light heart, she retired to her bed on Thursday night, and gladly looked forward to the morrow. T’U describe him to the girls as the most impassable monster it was ever my lot to become acquainted with.’ With buoyant alacrity, she rose next morning, unmindful of the cold whichwaspiercing; slippingherfeetintoapair of warm slippers, she went to the window to raise the blind. 0 horror ! What she had feared from the * feeling ’ of the cold the night before, was realised. A deep mantle of snow covered the ground. Chapter 11. Helen came down to breakfastjutterly doleful. She had indulged in a good cry, to begin with ; and now was tilled with dismay at the prospect before her. On entering the breakfast-room, she found Mr Hilton had been waiting for her some time. ‘I beg your pardon ; I am very sorry to have kept you so long without your breakfast.’ Attracted by her despondent, tones, helooked up with the first approach to interest he had manifested since her arrival, and said : * I am sorry for you, Miss Cameron ; this snow will make you a prisoner for some time, I am afraid; ’ and regret for himself was not unmingled with his sorrow for her.

‘\'es: I am dreadfully sorry,’ she returned, with a look of blank disappointment in her face, regardless of the ill compliment which had actually penetrated Mr Hilton’s pachydermatous sensibility, and set him thinking. Now, when a man like that begins to think, he generally does so to some Eurpose. The latent chivalry of this strange eing began to awake, and the man remembered with self-reproach that he had done nothing, as a host, to merit any other than the candid avowal he had just heard. ‘I am sure I don’t know what I shall do,’ she moaned, as she stood irresolute by the fire, too genuinely miserable to be polite. ‘Well, come and try some breakfast, and then we must see what can be done to preserve life in you afterwards,’ he said, with something very like a smile shining on his face, the first she had ever seen. As a gleam of sunshine attracts on a gloomy day, so did this smile attract Helen, and caused her to regard him with surprise. He caught the look, and asked its meaning in such a friendly voice, that she said with simple bluntness; ‘I saw you smile; I didn’t think you could !’ The smile widened into a laugh, notwithstanding the unintended sarcasm, which he was conscious he deserved : the snow was falling outside, while within the first symptoms of a thaw had begun ! He, strange to say, was the first to be aware of it, as he glanced every now and then at the woebegone face sitting near.)

‘ls it true,’ she faltered, ‘that the snow does not clear away for weeks ? ’

‘Quite true.’ ‘ O dear ! what shall I do ? she sighed. ‘ We must try and make the best of it for you,’ he answered kindly. ‘I kno.v this must be a dreadfully dull hole for a young lady to be shut up in, with only a couple of old people, like my mother and myself, for company ; but I am afraid there is no help for it! ’

‘ Are you fond of reading? ’ he asked, after a pause. ‘ I have some good books, but not in your line, I am afraid. ’ ‘I am afraid not. You are very learned and clever, are you not ? ’ she asked, with amusing simplicity, her eyes opening as she made the inquiry, as though treading on unknown and dangerous ground. ‘ The girls—the Narcots, told me so, and that made me rather afraid of you, and fancy’ • I couldn’t laugh, and had forgotten how to smile,’ he interposed. ‘Well, don’t be frightened any more, for I am neither learned nor clever, that I know of; and I believe I can smile when provoked to do so: only living so much to myself, I seldom get an opportunity,’ ‘ But that is your own fault, is it not ? You hate—us —women, I mean; don’t you ? So the Narcot girls told me. Is it true ? ’ * Partially ’; and he pushed .his plats away as he spoke, and resumed his favorite attitude, with his elbows on the table ; then, as if reflecting, he added in a lower tone : ‘ Still I believe I am capable of conversion, only no one has ever tried.’

‘ Perhaps you never gave them a chance,’ she said, with a bright laugh, which displaced the cloud of melancholy for a moment, as she went to the window to see if she could discern signs of relenting on the part of her cruel jailer outside. Mr Hilton, meanwhile, was revolving her last words in his mind, as he played with the bread crumbs, saying to himself, that she had spoken rightly ; and when a woman has once had the luck to drive a truth home into a man’s mind, which he is willing to acknowledge, she has certainly gained a point. On other mornings, he generally disappeared as soon as breakfast was over, and never showed again until summoned to another meal ; but this morning he sat on and on, even after the cloth was removed, and the distraction of arranging the crumbs into mathematical problems had been taken from him.

His train of thought evidently lay aboveground this morning, ‘ This girl would be in the house for weeks ;’ and he caught himself looking at her as she gazed hopelessly out of the window ; and then this thought, at one time so repugnant, grew not altogether distasteful, although, of course, there would be a vast amount of inconvenience attending it, which he was forced to admit. It was a bad business on the whole, certainly, and he would have infinitely preferred if the snow had not fallen. But here she was; and he must make the best of it, and be thankful that, as far as women went, she was endurable after her kind, was unobtrusive at least, and would evidently rather not be staying ; under these circumstances, he must make an effort.

Helen left the window, and took an easy chair by the fire, resigning herself to the hopelessness of the situation, wondering when on earth Mr Hilton meant to go, when he surprised her by turning his chair right round in front of the fire, and ensconced himself in it as if to take up his position for the morning. A quarter of an hour passed, during which time they both looked hard at the fire while neither spoke. Then Helen said : ‘ Please, Mr Hilton, don’t sit there all day and do manners on my account. I shall go up to my room, if you do. If I am to be a prisoner here for some time, don’t add to my affliction by making me feel lam a trouble to you. I know you are always hard at work by this time. Indeed, it is on my conscience that I interrupted your studies at meal-times, as the Narcots told me you always read at such times.’

‘ I am afraid the Narcots have not given me a good character; paying me out for all my incivilities, I suppose. You might however, give me an opportunity of proving them mistaken. ’

‘ Yes; but I cannot bear disturbing the routine of anyone’s daily life. I feel as if they must look upon me as such a bore, an unenviable distinction at best.’

‘ But suppose I tell you, you don’t bore me he answered with a smile.

‘ I shouldn’t believe you, I am afraid. The leopard can’t change his skin, or his spots; which is ,it? I am so stupid over quotations. No ;it is the Ethiopian who has the skin.’

* But as I am neither Ethiopian nor leopard, but belonging to the Caucasian race of the genus homo, I may be permitted to change that mercurial organism existing in our species called mind. Without wishing to pay you any compliment, I desire to say that I should be glad to make your enforced imprisonment in my house less doleful than you at present contemplate. If you can suggest any course of amusement you would like to pursue, in which I can assist you, I will forego my books while you are here, and—place my time at your disposal.’ The last sentence came out with an effort which shewed the immensity of the sacrifice. Helen looked incredulous. ‘Do you really mean it ? ’ she asked.

‘ I am perfectly in earnest.’ ‘Then, I know what I would like.’ ‘ What ? ’ he inquired with a nervous pang; he knew not what wild prank he may have pledged himself to. ‘ You shall impart some of that wonderful learning of yours into my unfurnished brain. I have so long wanted to read Goethe in the original, but I don’t know German sufficiently. Mrs Hilton tells me that you know Goethe and German, and everybody and everything, alive, and dead, by heart. Will you teach me German ? ’

‘ Has my poor mother been giving me a bad character, like the rest of the world? — with more cause, perhaps ;’ and he looked in the fire without answering her question. ‘ But you really are a German scholar—are you not 1’ ‘ Yes ; I will teach you.’

‘ Oh, if you will, I’U think you the kindest creature in the world ; and won’t regret the snow,’ she added archly. ‘ Then, while I am studying, you can go onwithyourreadmg and writing, can’t you ? and you won’t find me so dreadfully in the way, will you ?’ His face wore an amused look as'he listened to her questions. ‘So you want to read Goethe in original. Well, you follow me; but remember, I shall expect to be paid for my trouble, ’ Tj be contimed.