LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 372, 21 August 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

BELINDA MASON'S ROMANCE. HOW IT BEGAN, HOW IT WENT ON, AND HOW IT ENDED. Part I. -'.' HOW IT BEGAN. Belinda Mason lived in the suburbs of a great city. Surrounded by the coils of this vast stone-serpeut, which was continually expanding into new villas and roads, her life was yet as quiet as though, instead of houses, the trees of a dense forest were around her, and as though the voices of her fellow-creatures were the songs of birds, falling unheeded on her ears. Belinda's mother was a staid little woman, with a face which reminded one of a piece of washed-out blue muslin, or of a white cat in extremely low spirits. Mrs Mason belonged to the Methodist persuasion, and filled the double office of post-mistress to the district, and cap and bonnet-maker to any ladies who stood in need of such articles. Mrs Mason was not a fashionable milliner—far from it —the very word ' fashion' stank in her nostrils, and would have awakened a deep groan from her stricken spirit. Was not fashion' the great Juggernaut of the age, before whose car thousands of her frivolous sex were prostrating themselves, and being dashed to atoms under those relentless wheels ? No ! Mrs Mason manufactured grave, sombre structures for elderly ladies ; she loved the feel of a thick, solid ribbon of some sad colour, ribbon which would wear and dye and wear again ; and her customers wereprincipally widows, orthe spinter sisters of Methodist dignitaries, who Mrs Mason, partly because she belonged to the Zion Chapel congregation, and partly because she was a first-rate worker, who stitched faultlessly with her own thin worn figures, and despised the flimsy velocity of machines. , ,1

Of late Mrs Mason had had a great many searchings of heart with regard to her daughter Belinda. She feared, with much sighing, that something of the old Adam was cropping out in the little seventeen-year-old maiden. Why had the child's father, now dead and gone, given her that outlandish name of Belinda ? Unconsciously, Mrs Mason was following Mr Shandy's theory of Christian nanies ; and though she knew nothing of Pope, or of the Rape of the Lock, and its associations with her daughter's classic appellation, still she felt that there was a worldliness in the sound, and that if the little maid had been called Sarah, or Hannah, or Rebecca, something Scriptural in fact, she would |not have had so many apprehensions about her. Belinda had been brought up after the strictest code of old-world Methodism, no piano playing, no lace-work, no frippery—a prayer meeting every Wedesday, and a Bible class every Friday—aud yet Mrs Mason had observed that last Sunday morning, when the Bev Mr Phriold was_ engaged in the exercise of prayer, Belinda had not only yawned, but actually slept; her head had fallen on her shoulder, while something between a sigh and a snore had escaped from her rosy lips. This was bad, but this was not all, Belinda had become desperately fond of looking out of the window. This window was an upper one, and belonged to Mrs Mason's sitting-room, which was over the post-office and shop. Here Belinda had two pots of rather .scraggy geraniums, and a box of dusty mignonette, and here she would take her seat on a straw stool, with her bit of muslin ribbon in her hand, and glance up and down the narrow suburban street, and glance more especially over the way, where Mrs Shepherd had two small houses, which she let out to desirable lodgers. After such glances, Belinda's hands would fall listlessly on her lap, and her wistful blue eyes would seem to retire into their dark depths, as if to ponder over some secret, known only to herself. The comings and dcings of Mrs Shepherd s lodgers always created some excitement in Meryon (the suburb to which Mrs Mason's shop belonged), and one evening just before our story begins, as Belinda had drawn near the window to thread her needle by the fastfading twilight, she had seen a cab driving furiously up to the green door, which bore the name of " Mrs Shepherd " printed on a brass-plate, just under the knocker. Down fell the needle from Belinda's hands; she watched a portmanteau, an oddly-shaped case, and a hat-box, as they were lifted down, and placed on the steps. And now, as she looked stealthilj across, she 'saw some one standing at the door, some one with his face turned towards the street, his hands thrust iu his pockets, and who was lazily whistling a tune as he surveyed his surroundings. To tell the plain truth, he was no great things to look at ; but those eager eyes of seventeen see sometimes so much more than there \a to see, they are annointed with a magic salve which glorifies everything they gaze upon ; so Belinda saw, not a tall pasty-faced young fellow, with tolerable features, sunken dark eyes, long, greasy black hair and a moustache and clothes' that smelt detestably of tobacco smoke, but a prince charming, a wondrous hero, the like of which neither Meryon nor she had ever beheld. i Before the stranger went m, he glanced up at Belinda's window—and did he, or did he not smile recognizingly, and nod his head, as much as to say, ' There you are, are you V Surely he did: and was there not- also a faintly whispered 'Good night' Belinda thought there was, and a sudden flood of surprise and delight, that was almost terror, swept over her. Overhead, in the clear grey arch of the sky, little sparkles of stars twinkled out and then went in; but she saw them not, she saw and heard nothing but this stranger, new ' lighted from some heaven-kissing hill.' That night Belinda slept light; the night following, except for a few disturbed dozes, in which snatches of sharply keen wakefulness, her eyes still kept their vigils, and her slender white arms tossed aineag her tangled brown hair, and flung themselves, now here, now there, never at rest for a single moment. Mrs Shepherd's new lodger occupied all her thoughts. What was he doing? where had he come from ? had he really noticed her; and if so, what did he think of poor little Belinda ? did he actually vouchsafe to throw her a crumb of approbation ? Ah; then, indeed, happy, thrice happy she. The morning after his arrival, she had watched him hurry down the street, and straining her eyes, she had seen him mounting the knife-board of an omnibus, and being whirled into the vast city of which sha heard so much and knew so little. As it touched by an enchanter's wand, whole acres of castles in the air rose before her. ... (lb be continued,)