LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 374, 24 August 1875, Page 4

LITERATURE.

BELINDA MASON’S ROMANCE, HOW IT COMMENCED, HOW IT WENT ON, AND HOW IT ENDED. Continued. Part 11. HOW IT WENT ON. Belinda’s utter ignorance as to everything about Mr Yansittart certainly did open out to her a vast field for conjecture ; she had hardly settled him in the medical profesion when she began to doubt and question whether or not she was right. Strangelooking square bales like pictures, were sometimes brought to Mrs Shepherd s lodgings, and appeared and disappeared by the hands of sundry errand-boys What were these bales ? I can hardly tell by what process it came about, but the doctor theory vanished from Belinda’s mind like a whiff of smoke. Presto! and bottles, phials, dis-secting-rooms, operating knives, all were gone ; and Belinda’s new notion was that Mr Yansittart must be a scene-painter at a theatre. She once had a friend, who had a friend who who had a brother, who was ac quainted with a person who filled such a post. This was how the seedling (as it might be called) of this idea first caught hold of Belinda’s mind, and finally sprang up in full luxuriance. Far from taking away from Mr Yansittart s charms, this new conjecture rather added to them than otherwise, About a theatre, or anybody connected with it, there was something fearfully fascinating, and at the same time diametrically opposed to all Belinda’s associations. It was like being brought in contact with an inhabitant of the planet Jupiter. She had constantly heard Mr Pinfold, and other lights of Methodism, exclaiming against theatre-goers, and she had listened with trembling and sympathetic fright at the warnings that were thundered forth. It ■eemed that the pit of the theatre was the ante-chamber to the pit of hell, if, indeed, it -was not a miniature of hell itself. Such warnings were rather wasted cn Zion Chapel congregations, whose utmost dissipations consisted of a mild concert, but Belinda had often privately wondered who and what the people were that did attend these vast lighted halls of iniquity ? and greater and 'more thrilling question, Who and what were the people who were engaged fin the actual business of the stage ? Had they indeed a taste of brimstone about them, a touch of Mephistophiles, a hidden tail peeping out slyly now and then ? The question was at once mysterious and alluring. In a day or two the notion that Mr Vansittart was a scene-painter reigned triumphantly in Belinda’s mind, but after a time it in its turn began to totter, and finally to fall. She resembled a child looking over a gate which it cannot climb, and turning its head now on this side now on that, to catch a glimpse of what is beyond, and what it cannot see. At last, like Orlando, Belinda could live thinking no longer, she must have something real to go upon. All of a sudden a clue comes. Late one June evening, when the windows were all wide open, the sound of some unfamiliar instrument came winging along from Mrs Shepherd’s upper rooms, and seeming to sob and wail to itself, as it rose and fell, Belinda listened, an answering . thrill darted through her, her spirit lifted up its arms, and sighed eager throbs of rapture. Bassoons and banjos were all alike to her, but whatever this unknown instrument was, she knew that Mr Yansittart was the placer, and did he not seem to be speaking in a lovely language of his own, and speaking to her ? Why, the chapel organ was nothing to it! It was plain now that Mr Yansittart was a musician; it was no ’prentice hand that could bring out such ups and downs, such trills and turns, such little cascades of melody; these mysterious bales were bales of music, and those daily visits to town were to rehearsals or wonderful musical tournaments. To be a doctor—to be a scene-painter —what were they to this ? Straightway Mr Yansittart was exalted to a still higher sphere, and a newer halo was spread around him.

Belinda’s conjectures Had now a backbone to them; she did not yet know whether Mr Yansittart performed at oratorios, concerts, music halls, or theatres. On the whole, she inclined to the latter; for it was odd how the idea of theatres—so foreign to all her associations—would appear again and again in some form or other before her shy, Quakerish mind. Before the evening was over she had hidden herself behind her geraniums. She felt as though her secret was getting so strong, and taking such possession of her, that it must be writing itself all over her tell-tale body, so that every passer-by would be able to read it. With even more interest than before, she now watched Mr Yansittart as he went to town, it was usually either at half-past nine or ten ; and so she sheltered herself behind the window curtains, and peeped coyly out for her daily banquet. Sometimes her hero would look up, smile, and take off his hat; that was good. Sometimes he would stop, and say, * ‘ Good morning, Miss Belinda, your geraniums are coming on famously that was still better; and sometimes he would hurry down the street, without looking to the right hand or the left; that was bad indeed. After such mornings as these, Belinda would grow very still, take a needleful of black thread, and set to work on one of old Miss Pinfold’s half-mourning caps. It was on a gusty afternoon in June that Mrs Mason took her umbrella, faded to a dusty brown, and set off to a class meeting, leaving Belinda by herself to mind the shop. It was an uninteresting part of the day to Belinda, Mr Yansittart was out, and there was no probability of his being back for some time yet. Beyond selling a stamp or two, she had an idle half-hour as as she sat behind the little counter. There was a telegraph message coming through the wires, however, and Miss Danby, with her brow well knit, was at the farther corner of the shop, jotting down the letters as they jerked themselves on her ear. Belinda lazily listened to the steady click, click; not wire messages alone, so it seemed to her were in the air, but every little breeze was vocal, and the whole world one great song which spoke to every one, like Mr Vansittart’s violin, according as they had ears to hear it. What with the hot sun, and what with the east wind, and what with the telegraphic message, and what with one thing ana the other, Belinda got drowsier anil drowsier, and at last her arms dropped on the counter, her head fell heavily upon them, and she sank off into a doze—just a shadow' of sleep— a dream of a dream, when the fniottet cojpcioußQMg of life and feeling

ripples over the surface of sleep, like sunlight over a tree-surrounded lake. All of a sudden the shop bell tinkled sharply, the door opened, and who should walk in, with a brisk step, but Mr Yansittart! To say that Belinda started “like a guilty thing surprised,” would give but a faint idea of the horrified eagerness with which she rose to her feet; to say that she blushed, would be to say nothing; red flames darted over her, here, there, everywhere ; there was not an unblushed spot spot to be seen. To l)e continued.