LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 340, 15 July 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A LAST LOVE AT POENIC. C Continued.') * It looks like a revival of Eden, I fancy,’ Mr Eutterby observed. ■With better gardening,’ said Ondelette, * for Adam was but a beginner. He would never have despised our Pornic and Saint Marie. ’ She had not seen the new guest for fire years, and was very young, inexperienced, and childlike, but was as free with him—as much at home in a moment—as any London woman could have been, were she accustomed to have a dinner-party twice a week, and to talk to a dozen new acquaintances every night of the season. For Ondelette lived a free family life, quiet and intimate, whether at Angers or Pomic. Very few indeed were admitted to her home; but whoever was admitted, was at once a friend. When Mr Eutterby went upstairs to dress himself for dinner, he carried with him the impression of her frank simplicity, and thought that he had seen a comely picture in seeing her sun browned cheeks, her large brown eyes, very

soft, overshadowed with shining hair, the colour of deep gold. Philip Eutterby knew the old French poetry, and remembered that Ondelette was of the type of that Eonsard loved —seen most in the green sunny country of Anjou —la petite vntcelle Angevine.

The little dining-room looked pleasant in the evening, with its dark buffet and deep grey wall paper; and the lamp hung from the ceiling, throwing a bright light on the table, where silver glittered and fine glass was clear, and Ondelette’s blackberries had the place of honour, and were duly flanked by blue plates with greyish-red chrysanthemums. ‘ It is early to make a show of your chrysanthemums,’ said Mr Eutterby,’ for tomorrow is but the first day of October. But your instinct of colour is exquisite, Ondelette. ’ ‘ Thank you,’ said Ondelette, ‘ The chrysanthemums cannot come soon enough, nor stay long enough. They are my favourite flowers. 0 ! but that is a poor word—‘favourite’ flowers. They are more than that, But perhaps it’s too early for yon to value them. They are best in their own time, after all—when the earth is gloomy, whichever way you look. In November they come like cheerfulness in winter, but always very sober—delightfully sober—like a friend who comes in your trouble.’ ‘What is your ‘trouble,’ Ondelette?’ asked Madame de Malmy. *My trouble ! Oh, I have no trouble. Perhaps I should not like these sad, dear, sober things, if I had. There ! lie as I put you. He will sink down below the rest. He is so modest—his stem is not long enough. He doesn’t assert himself—that chrysanthemum. He will never get on in the world.’

Philip Rutterby smiled. ‘ You have come to a foolish place,’ said Ondelette. *We talk nothing but nonsense at Pornic. It is such a pleasant place, there is no need to be wise in it.’ * But we want to hear about your acquisitions, my dear friend,’ said De Malmy. ‘What have you been picking up lately, since I was with you in London ?’ One of Rntterby’s few pleasures was to talk about art: so he answered readily, * You know Crome ? The chief man of the Norwich landscape school, you remember. Unless, indeed, Cotman ’ ‘ Even I, in France, know Crome,’ said Ondelette. * Have you got a picture of his, Mr Rutterby ?’ ‘Two or three,’ he answered, glad that she cared to know. ‘ I have had them for several years on my dining-room wall. But it is a little water-colour I was going to speak of to your father, I had one home the day before I came away. It is not at all a ‘taking’ drawing. But you must have what you can get of Crome, I fancy, in water-colour. He is difficult to meet with in water-colour; and when met with, perhaps more interesting than valuable. Perhaps he was not at his ease in water-colour .—a little hard and dry generally, I daresay; but there are are willows in the background of this drawing which have the same master hand in them, unmistakably, as the great willow picture which is still in Norfolk. The French were right, I believe, in ranking Crome high. Ondelette, do you draw in water-colours ?’ ‘ Ondelette obtained a certificate from the teacher at the Convent,’ her mother informed Mr Rutterby, with pride. ‘ But Sister Fidelity was always partial to me,’ said the girl. ‘I know it was not fair of her, though I did my best. And if I had deserved the certificate, it wouldn’t have been much, I ought indeed to be able to draw and to play, being such a wretched little housekeeper.’ ‘ En verite , tu est tres-mauvaise menagere ,’ her father said, gently pulling the long pendant pearl drop in her ear, ‘As long as you stay at home with us, your faults in this matter may be concealed or overlooked; but the day on which I put on my hat, little girl, to go out and look for a son-in-law, I pha.ll have to remember what a child you are in these matters. You would be at the mercy of your servants, Ondelette.’ ‘ Then I would have good servants, and should like to be at their mercy. But that will not be for a very long while.’ ‘ Ondelette allows herself to herself to say silly things,’ remarked her mother in an explanatory way. * She has a very pretty talent as an artist,’ her father added to Mr Rutterby. Ondelette was used to be spoken of frankly, and these chance phrases of slight deprecation or slight praise wrought no change in her look and maimer —a look and manner jof much peace, breaking now and again into merriment, as when summer lightning breaks across the placid summer sky, ‘ Do you keep to your habit of walking after dinner ?’ asked Monsieur de Malmy of his guest. ‘ Except in winter,’ said Philip Rutterby. ‘Then I enjoy my own ‘ interior ’ as best I can —looking over my portfolios, in my chair by the fire, like the self-centred bachelor that lam.’

• Do you like interiors ?’ asked Ondelette ; * for if you do, I will show you some pretty ones in Pornic. I will take you a walk after dark some evening.’ ‘ There is no one to mind in Pornic,’ interpolated Madame de Malmy. Last year, when papa was less busy, he and I used to go our rounds after dark very often. I have hardly been at all this year. Papa is working so hard at his learned pamphlet, you know—all about the castle of Plessis-les-Tours. But I tell papa your Walter Scott has been before him in that. ‘ Sir Walter wrote a novel, and woixld have been the last person to think he had anticipated my monograph,’ answered the man of learned leisure. ‘ Give us some music, my child, and place for my friend Eutterby the cosiest chair in the salon. Even your enthusiasm can hardly propose to lead him forth to-night. Ah, that is right,’ he added, passing into the little salon, and seeing with satisfaction the cheerful light of the wood fire—flickering, sober, and lowj to-morrow is the first of October. The nights freshen, via filled

‘No lamp, De Malmy—no lamp unless you wish it. It would quite spoil the charm, I fancy. I have no doubt Ondelette can play without any further light, and the effect of the interior is too pretty a one to spoil.’ And Eutterby sat down, as he was bidden, in the cosiest chair—a bachelor, when once past forty, takes the cosiest chair without even knowing it—and De Malmy sat on the other side of the fire, and his wife between, and the firelight flickered on Ondelette’s hair and cheek, as she sat down to the little straight black piano, * Xn my house I have no use for a piano,’ said Philip Eutterby, rather sadly. (For he

was often a calmly melancholy man, of much timidity, and he never sought to hide the expression of his temperament.) ‘ But if I had a piano, it should be a plain straight box like your French ones, and not spoilt by our meaningless and vicious curvatures and ornaments. A piano, Be Malmy, is a cabinet for music, and that is simply what it ought to look like. ’ ‘ Are yon going to listen ’ asked Ondclette, quite frankly. ‘ Why, of course,’ answered Eutterby. ‘ 1 asked, because, if people listen, they ought to know what they arc listening to. I am going to play a prelude of Bach’s, first; then a fugue that does not belong to it.’ She played. He listened and looked. She stopped. He asked her to repeat it. She played the two again, without even glancing round by way of answer to his request. And when the two were finished once more—an affair of only five minutes altogether—there was nothing said directly; and before the silence broke, Ondelette had struck the full, deep chords once more, and and for the third time they heard that music’s passionate undertone. ‘ Then you like Bach ?’ she said to Mr Eutterby, now turning round from the piano, very happy and satisfied. ‘ The man who wrote that prelude must have felt some thing deeply. 1 wonder what it was ?’ said Ondelette.

You should play something else,’ said Madame de Malmy, ‘ One wearies of the same thing. ‘ I never get tired of the sea in autumn, and its long, low roll, out here, that never stops. Why should one be tired of Sebastian Bach at a third hearing ? Eh, papa ?’ It was to her father she appealed. And she knelt down by him, and put her hand in his arm, and looked into the fire, broodingly, quietly. Madame de Malmy rang for the lamp, and began to scan the pages of the Figaro, ‘ And the monograph on Plessis-les-Tours?’ asked Philip Eutterby of his friend. * Don’t let me interfere with your evening occupations.

‘ I have nothing to do this evening but to write two lines to an English archaeologist, acknowledging the receipt of a remarkable paper on ‘ The use of the word Pig, in its connection with Pig-cross.’ Then we will talk again, dear friend, and hear more of your acquisitions, ’ ‘ Have you long been a collector?’ enquired Madame de Malmy, with a civil but languid interest.

‘ A matter of twenty years, dear Madam,’ Rutterby answered. ‘ You see I have neither chick nor child, nor any relation. My little fortune has always been more than enough for my needs, and men as ignorant of the world as I am do not know how to be charitable wisely to any one but themselves. So I have a good many things by this time, not of much value to others, I daresay, but I admire them myself. Moreover, I think one does some good in guarding reverently beautiful things.’

He always spoke of his collection modestly, but it had been brought together with the finest taste, and as to its money value, it was the result of an annual outlay of several thousands, continued now for twenty years. Experts, who had seen it, were right in judging that altogether it had cost a hundred thousand pounds, and would fetch double that money.

When Phillip Rutterby went up to bed, his thoughts were full of Ondelette. A bachelor of fifty-four, in indifferent health, is particular about the disposition of his chamber, and the set of its blinds and window curtains. He does not sleep immediately in a fresh room. The froalx room breaks in a little upon his familiar ways. So Rutterby had time to think of Ondelette. Her beauty had impressed him, and he had been at home with it generally the beauty he saw was only that which passed him by chance,in the street. There was such simplicity, too, with the beauty, and with these the poetry of girl-nature never suppressed—-child-nature, perhaps; hardly a woman’s yet. * Were I a young man,’ thought Philip Rutterby, ‘ I suppose I should fall in love with her to-day or to morrow. But for me, that is all past—all past, ’ he muttered to himself. He had had his passion in his youth, and had been constant to it. And yet not quite ‘in his youth,’ for his youth had had its lighter loves— ‘ blazes,’ Polonius said, ‘ giving more light than heat, you must not take for fire.' These mild thin blazes of a mild quiet temperament subsided soon, and at thirty an old friendship glowed into love, and he looked forward to happiness. The girl, a clergyman’s daughter, fell suddenly ill. The marriage had to be postponed, while she -wintered abroad. She came back stronger, and the marriage day was fixed upon. But she was ill again, and was hurried to Cannes, whither Philip Rutterby followed her. The new illness was a short one. She died one bright November morning, within sight of the Mediterranean, They buried her under a row of cypresses that bowed lightly over her with every wind from the mountains. The_e things were very deep in Rutterby’s heart, and for two and twenty years he had been faithful to that memory. But, of course, in two and twenty years a structure wrought of many associations and many days had arisen and spread itself over the older memory, so that the older memory was like some verses learnt in childhood, recalled now and again, but not for service, or even pleasure, in the present life—the so different, the ever-changing present life, with the common thoughts and common needs of which this poor dead far away past has nothing to do. To many, when it does come up, this older memory is like an attenuated ghost —unreal beside the gross tangible presences of our vulgar days.

To be continued.

Following the example of the metropolis and Liverpool, Birmingham has gone in for wood paving, the town council having entered into a contract for laying down 20,000 square yards of wood pavement in the most crowded thoroughfares, A gun factory in Upper Austria is said to be making 250,000 rifles for Germany. It baa delivered 180,000, and has received a further order for 75,000, A Vienna firm is reported to be executing a German order for 30,000,000 of cartridges for delivery in June. A young man who knows all about it states that his experience has taught him that a llirt is a fool who delights in fooling fools, and the fool who is fooled by such a fool is the foolishest kind of fool, A lady, very stout, got on to a flour barrel to hang out clothes. When next seen she bad broken through the head of it, and was rolling round the back yard, unable to extricate herself, and screaming wildly. She repudiates the wearing of hoops altogether.