LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 528, 26 February 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

HOW HE WAS CURED,

(Continued.)

•Follow them, I say !' shrieked Mr Brooks with half his body out of window, and shaking his fist at the man, ' and I'll give you five pounds.' 'Follow 'em where?' bawled the coachman. 'To the devil!' cried Mr Brooks.

'Sit down, then," said the coachman hoarsely, ' and here goes.' Saying which he lashed his horse, and away clattered the jaded beast, while Mr Brooks with his body half way through the window, shook his clenched fist at the prospect and screamed to the coachman to drive quicker—quicker—quicker! In about half an hour's time they entered a village, and burst into the main street with a noise as of thunder, rattling the windows in their casements, and causing the people still abed to conclude that the day of judgment had really come at last. The coachman drew up before an inn, flung himself off- the box, and bawling out, • Here I stops !' fell to an attentive examination of his horse's legs. Mr Brooks bounded on to the pavement, and running up to a man who was cleaning the door of the inn with a mop, demanded him to tell him instantly if a gentleman and lady had passed that way. ' Oh, yes, plenty,' answered the man, recoiling, and holding his mop combatively. • When might you mean?' • This very morning—within this very hour.' 'No. Haint seen no one.' ' I don't believe you. You've been bribed to tell a lie !' cried Mr Brooks.

' Comp, come,' exclaimed the coachman laying a heavy hand on Mr Brook's shoulder; ' get in and I'll drive you home. All this here talk ain't of no use. The parties is gone, as may heasily be perceived; and if you take my advice, you'll go home and drink a glass o' something strong and get to bed, and make yourself comfortable, and not worrit yourself about them as wishes to amuse theirselves.' Saying which he began to drag Mr Brooks towards the fly. The unfortunate gentleman clenched his fists and hit out wildly; then uttering a groan, staggered, fell forward, and fainted away. When he recovered his senses, he was in his bedroom. How he got there it did not enter into his mind to conjecture. There he was, in his well-known bed, with .the wellknown curtains, safe and fast enough. And there he was alone ! It wasn't a dream, then ? She had left him ? The baronet was her protector? Heaven and earth ! how egregiously, miserably, madly he had been deceived! Imagine her elopipg with the man she had met only once ! leaving for ever the man she had sworn to love and be fathful to for ever ! What was his crime ? He had loved her too passionately. He had been jealous of her, that was all. How loving, how docile, she had always been ! How meek under his senseless reproaches,|his cruel imputations ! How often had she kissed him, with the tears in her eyes, making the soft answer that would have turned away any other man's wrath but his ! She was gone, and he was alone. His cruel jealousy, after rendering her short married life miserably wretched, had driven her into infamy. He was ill for a week ; and when he left his bed, he fell back with a groan, as he surveyed his thin and wasted countenance in the looking-glass. No letter had reached him from his wife—which might have been expected—and nothing had been heard of her. The Montgomeries called to express their deep sense of the injury their relative had done him: he listened to them in,

silence, with a ghastly stare, and on their departure bade his servants never again, on any account, to admit them. Nothing now remained for him to do but to get a divorce. He took some time making up his mind to this step, being sometimes impelled, and sometimes restrained, by two considerations of very opposite characters. First of all, he wouldn't be divorced, because that would put it into the power of the outrager of his honour and peace of mind to get married and live happily. Then, he would get divorced, in order that, by marrying again, he might show his wife how absolutely indifferent her memory was to him, aud how pleased ho was that she had taken herself off without putting him to the inconvenience of compelling her to leave him. Revenge finally determined him. He cor> ceived that it would cause Nelly's amour propre exquisite suffering if he let her understand that he sued for a divorce expressly that he might take a second wife, and thereupon applied to a lawyer, and got up a "case, and went to London, and gained a verdict, and lost about twenty pounds weight of flesh and the remainder of his nervous system. He was now a free man; and the most miserable of human beings. But his work was not yet accomplished. He had to seek a fresh helpmate, and entered upon his task with decent stealth and thoughtful circumspection. This time he was resolved to marry an ugly woman. Beauty was odious to his sight. He would marry such a woman as no man could contemplate without aversion. The more numerous the physical defects, the better. Had he possessed Frankenstein's receipt, he would have made a wife for himself.

There resided in the neighbourhood a family named. Tomkins, the head of whom had made his fortune as a hide-merchant in the City of London. Samuel Tomkins was a very cheerful old gentleman, with a civic cast of countenance and a bloodshot eye. His wife, who considered herself a first-class lady, and eligible for the best society in the country, becauseher brother keptan academy, had called twice on Mrs Brooks without either seeing her or inducing her to return the visit. However, this trifling neglect never prevented Mr Tomkins from buttonholing Mr Brooks whenever they happened to meet in the roads and lanes, and detaining him in a long monologue on American securities, about which Mr Tomkins knew a very great deal—everything, indeed, but the orthography and correct pronunciation of the proper names. Now, amongst those who came to condole (out of curiosity) with Mr Brooks on the loss of his wife, were Mr and Mrs Tomkins whom Mr Brooks received with much politeness for no other reason than because Nelly had disliked them. A friendship sprung up between the two gentlemen; and one afternoon, on Mr Brooks paying a visit to Mr Tomkins, he was introduced to Mrs Tomhins' niece, a young lady who had just arrived from the West Indies. Mr Brooks no sooner beheld her than he made up his mind to marry her. She was, in truth, ugly enough to justify his resolution, with a complexion resembling custard, and with black corkscrew curls, a nose composed entirely of nostrils, and little black eyes with bilious whites. He spoke to Mr Tomkins about her, who assured him that she was capable of making the best of wives, and that he should envy the man who married her. Accordingly, after a proper interval, Mr Brooks began to make love. But the ordeal was more shocking than he had anticipated. He found her fearfully willing ; she met him more than half-way. For ever and ever Nelly's sweet face was peeping at him over her swart successor's shoulder, disgusting him with his resolution. But revenge was sweet, and he was determined that no woman should ever make him jealous again. He had endured enough agony in that line to last him for one life-time. And what a mortal wound would it give to Nelly's pride should she ever hear of the extraordinary ugliness of the lady whom he had chosen to seat on the throne she had once occupied ! Welcome deformity, then } Carlotta Manx should be his wife } and having fortified himself with a glass of raw brandy, he proposed. The lady accepted him with a who >p of joy; and after executing two or three Nubian gambols, fell like a leech upon his breast.

Chapter 111. The Cure. A kind of fog descends upon Mr Brooks at this period of his life. We behold him only in part. That he is entirely and completely miserable it would be extremely -presumptuous to doubt ; for, although he had been married only a very short time, he has discovered that his wife is a vixen of the worst kind—a "West Indian shrew, who in her fits of passion, which were intolerably incessant, breathed nothing but simooms, whose character might be said to be composed of one enlarged spleen, a composition of ginger and bile. But worse than her fits of passion were her fits of tenderness. On suoh occasions she would nearly strangle Mr Brooks with her embraces. She would precipitate herself upon his breast, and, to use Lord Byron's language, 'grow there,' —like a fungus. Such solstitial paroxj sms were, as might be expected, extremely distasteful to a man who had been used to blandishments of a much milder and gentler nature ; and as his manner generally betokened how greatly he resented them, it commonly fell out that a violent quarrel followed her emotional lapses. Every day his life grew more burdensome, his hair more matted, his features more wasted, the hollows under his eyes blacker and deeper. His friends dropped him—not a living creature would meet his wife. Reports reached his ears that the whole district was rejoicing over his fate.

Mr Brooks grew afraid of his life. An impression gained upon him that the people were now awakened to a sense of the cruelty he bad been guilty of towards his first wife, and that there was a universal thirst for his blood. He dur3t not leave his house, and was therefore constrained, by terror, to keep his wife company all day long. And now did the miserable man begin to yearn for the old times to come back again and restore him his Nelly. How sweet, how fond, how womanly she was, he never so well understood as when he glanced at the yellow-faced woman he had married.

' Oh!' he would cry, clasping his thin hands, and gazing piteously heavenwards, *if I could only recall the past - only have my darling back with me again—never, never should a shadow of doubt of her love darken the brightness of my devotion. But it is too late ! She is gone—gone for ever ! I broke her heart—l drove her from me !'

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