LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 397, 20 September 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

PHYLLIS AND CORYDON. By Julia Kavanagh. ( Concluded .) The Count turned to a sailor, and bringing him forward, he said : ‘ This man was waiting for his sweetheart this morning, outside the harbour, when he saw two men, and a woman who was weeping bitterly, enter a boat. That woman was my wife. That boat made for the Thetis. I ask to search the Thetis, and get my wife back.’ ‘Sir, that is impossible,’ desperately said the Chevalier. ‘ Impossible,’ cried the Count, whose eyes turned like dark fire. ‘You tell me it is impossible for me to get my wife back from that den.’ ‘Yes, sir, I do,’ replied the Chevalier, pointing to the sea, ‘ There is the Thetis, overtake her if you can.’ The Count looked towards the far horizon. The sun was setting, the sea was flooded with fire, the sky was one broad sheet of flame, and in that burning glow he saw a black speck. He knew that this speck, which vanished as he looked, was bearing his Phyllis away, that ho was powerless to follow, that he might wait years for revenge, that life was wrecked, and that love was lost. Despair conquered him. He clenched his hands, he shook his fist at that pitiless sea, that had helped his ruin, and, with a cry of the sharpest anguish, with a groan of unutterable agony, he sank down senseless on the earth. The Chevalier was well-nigh distracted. A Countess had been carried off, and her husband, a brave young gentleman, was lying all but dead at his feet, ‘ And what could he do? Why, these awful young men would carry off the Queen of France soon, and everyone came and worried him, and what could he do ?’ In the meanwhile Gertrude had her young master removed to the nearest house, and that ceaseless Nemesis who so often crosses our fate, ordained that the husband of Phyllis should be taken to that old mansion on the port where she had once dwelt, and where, since the death of her mother, and the disappearance of her two sisters, the erring but lovely Manon had lived alone. The poor gentleman was kindly received, and conveyed to the room and laid in the bed with the curtains of faded blue lampas, which Manon had once shared with Phyllis. Without delay the best physician in the town was called in, and when the Count woke, in a terrible fever, from his death-like swoon, a kind nurse shared with Gertrude the task of tending him day and night. To some death comes, after hopeless calamity, a merciful deliverer ; to others the delirium of illness brings temporary forgetfulness ; but the husband of Phyllis was not so formed. From the first the doctor said he would not die, and though when he woke to life his senses were gone, there remained enough of memory to be his torment. Through all the ravings of fever he remembered that he had lost his Phyllis, and how he had lost her. He went through the search for h r over and over again. He followed her from Saint Brice to the chateau ; he tracked her to the city; when he reached it the Thetis was gone. For ever and ever that Thetis was sailing away, robbing him of every happiness and every delight. Fated ship, that had taken all things with it—the tender past, the blissful present, the delightful future. ‘ Thetis ! Thetis ! how had I wronged you ?’ he raved in his delirium, confounding the goddess of dead Olympus with his living enemies. ‘ Give me back my Phyllis.’ In vain the poor young madman received the tenderest nursing, this silverfooted Thetis killed him by inches. He took poor old Gertrude for her, and kissed her brown hands in pathetic entreaty, with a ‘Give me back my Phyllis,’ that was both piteous and despairing. His other nurse, that girl with the blue eyes and the golden hair, he knew but too well. ‘ Do not come near me,’ he would say, bending his wrathful eyes upon her; ‘ I know you, and I would rather have Thetis than you. Go away, I say. Go away.’ On hearing this harsh sentence the beautiful face would turn away weeping, and after awhile come back, to be again driven away and repulsed sternly. Yet one night the sick man relented. ‘ I know you are not my Phyllis,’ he said, ‘ though you are so like her; but cheat me, cheat me—say you are Phyllis. ’ ‘ I am Phyllis,’ she replied softly. ‘ Then why are you not on board the Thetis ?’ ‘ Because I was brought and hidden here till the Thetis sailed. ’ ‘ And who went away with the Thetis ?’ _ ‘ Manon ; she took my place. She did it for your sake, and I am your Phyllis. Look. ’ She bent her face near his ; he raised his head eagerly to kiss her, then he pushed her away sternly. • ‘ Where is the mole on your cheek ?’ he asked— * that mole which nearly caught me once ! You forget putting it on to-day, my lady. Put it on when you want to cheat me, put it on.’ She wept, but he only laughed at her tears. And so it was ever: he either loathed her, and drove her from him, or, when he tolerated her presence, he upbraided her with not cheating him out of his despair. At length the fever was conquered, delirium left him, and the Count woke back to life, and though not at once, to the bitter memory of his sorrow. His first consciousness was of a room,-that could belong neither to Saint Brice nor to the chateau of La Faille,. It was too small for the one, and too dingy for the other. Besides, was not that shipping which he saw through the open window ; were not those tall masts rising and white flags fluttering against the blue sky ? As the Count looked thus the past came back to him in all its agony. He gazed around him as if to escape from it, and the very image he wanted to fly from appeared at the foot of his bed, in all its seductive beauty. He uttered a sharp cry, for she stood there before him, weeping and smiling as she wept. She stood there, fair and tender, his wife, his own Phyllis with the mole on her cheek. ‘ Phyllis, my Phyllis, where have you been all this time?’ he asked, when he could speak. ‘ Here with you,’ she answered gently. ‘ Here all thetime with you,’ He looked round as if for some other face. Phyllis shook her head, and said, sadly: Manon is gone ; I was brought here. She took my place, and went on board the Thetis in my stead. One of the Gardes du Pavillion, who liked her, helped her to cheat the

rest. She did it for your sake, and—and she hade me tell you that you were to think of Manon now and then.’ ‘Think of her,’ said the Count, much moved. ‘ Ah, surely. How can I but think of one without whom there would have been no more happiness for me ?’ And so these two were happy from that time forth, and the arcadia of their youth dwelt with them for evermore. But if the beautiful Manon was not forgotten by Phyllis and Corydon, she was seen no more by them. A rumour once reached them, in their blissful dream of love, that she had married an old sea captain, but whether it was true or false they never knew. Even in fairy tales, idylls, and romances, some one must go to the wall, some sad Manon must walk in the shade, whilst happy Phyllis and Corydon reioice in the sun.