LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 547, 20 March 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

♦ THE CLYTIE. Chapter i. Near an open window, overlooking tire Square, sat Marian Elton writing a letter, as an Italian boy came by hawking some plaster images. The morning was so lovely that she felt the influence of its brightness with a warm glow of heart-gladness which sunlight upon flowers has the power of imparting; and just then the dancing rays shone so beamingly upon the llower-box on the win-dow-ledge, that she looked up to watch the dazzling effect, and inhale the perfume which the fragrant blossoms, as it seemed to her, exhaled gratefully. The Italian boy, catching her eye as she thus paused, looked entreatingly, and begged her to buy one of his images. A glance at his woe-begone face touched her heart. ‘ Perhaps he is hungry,’ she thought; and she beckoned him to caff, while she rang the bell to have him admitted—not that she wanted any of his ware's but she felt some compunction in suffering a fellow creature who looked hungry to leave her door unfed, or without the means of procuring food. There were many very well designed images in his basket; but as her object was to relieve him, she took the first that offered —a miniature bust of Clytie. For the little image she paid him the price he asked, which was double its real worth. She knew he was cheating her, but she was one of those who could make allowance for the temptation of grim poverty, which finds honesty an almost impossible virtue when running a race with want. On coming back to the room, she placed the Clytie on an empty bracket, and continued ’ her writing ; while every now and then she paused to take a glance at her purchase, with a feeling of compassion, as she recalled the mythological legend, and thought it but symbolised a fact of common occurrence. She regarded the Clytie (the water nymph, whose love for the sun-god Apollo being uureturned, she has chanced into a sunflower, that she might ever follow his course) as the ideal of unrequited but constant affection—the unhappiest of woes for a woman to bear; so it seemed to her just then, and a shadow fell upon her spirits in the contemplation. * Would her purchase prove an omen ? was a question which kept tormenting her mind, as she wrote to her friend the following : ‘ I have just bought a Clytie. 0 Amy, suppose I also love in vain ! I feel that, like her, I too would for evermore turn, spellbound, towards the sun of my world. It is appalling to thinkffiow utterly my heart has gone from me ; and I have no sure hope that I shall ever find it where alone I care to keep it. ‘We met again last night, when his coldness amounted to repulsion, but a repulsion which attracts me more than all the compli-

ments I receive from the many who seem to court me. My life is now but weariness, unspent in his society. I live but in the hours when I know he is by; although, oddly enough, while full of conversation with those around, he rarely ever addresses me. ‘ And j et—and yet—intuition ! I am mad to use the word ; it is, after all, but a delusion of my overwrought brain, which imagines what it longs for. Forgive me, Amy ; but 1 know that with you my feelings will be held sacred; and as it eases my overfull heart to pour them out to one so sympathetic and safe, you will not deny me the luxury my friendship calls thus largely upon your good nature to honor, knowing, as I do, that your love is equal to any demands of mine on that score. ‘ It seems little else than a fatality which has overtaken me. You know I may speak thus to you without vanity—that I have never lacked for that chivalrous attention which is gratifying to most girls. I have accepted it with appreciation, but nothing more ; my heart throughout has remained intact, until, or even before, he came. It is so strange ; my interest awoke from the moment my cousin Harry’s wife said to me one day about a year ago : “ We expect ‘a visitor, an old friend of Harry’s ; they were at college together. I have heard sc much of him, that I am quite curious to see this Mr Leonard Faithful. Charming name, is it not ?’ ‘ I felt it so, and recalled what Balzac says in other words, ‘ ‘ Who shall account for the attraction of a name ?’ Laugh at me, Amy ; I deserve it, for these confessions of mine are those of a girl who is but too alive to her foolishness. ‘ Yes, I conjured up visions of the man ; visions which were more than realised when I met him for the first time at the Nugents, and he took me into dinner. I can only des. cribe him to you as he then impressed me. A tall, fair, Saxon type of a man on a grand scale ; with light hair and beard, who spoke little, and was perfectly self-c mtairel. Imagine my being attracted by such an opposite ! but so it was. ‘ His remarks were few, and I was tonguetied ; so much so that Harry said to me across the table—“ Marian, why are you so silent? You arc usually lively enough. I hope, Faithfull, you have not overpowered my little cousin. ’ ‘ lie turned quietly towards me, and smiled, saying—“ I should regret such a catastrophe for you, Miss Elton. I hope I am not so formidable as all that.” ‘ I stammered out some senseless reply not at all to the purpose ; but we advanced to a better understanding after that, for he began telling me of his travels, and I am sure that I rivalled Desdemona in the interest with which I listened. How I regretted the move to the drawing-room, which obliges ladies to yawn together for half an hour in each other’s company ! As I sat meditating after dinner, in a corner by myself, I could not help exclaiming, mentally —“ You poor, foolish Marian ! the serpent has got at last into your happy Eden of girlhood, and stolen away your peace for ever. ’ ‘ It is awful to awake to the truth of the situation; and how was I to hide it ? —I, who am afflicted with a temperament that cannot bear the burden of a secret. I was ready to cry with vexation, to find that my independence of mind and will had so utterly gone from me; and yet, across my tears there gleamed a flash of such glorious electric sunlight, that I was nearly blind with joy when I realised for an instant the bare possibility of my ever winning the love of such a man. And then—transcendant folly ! —I began to catalogue my qualities silently. What had Ito attract one who, to my mind, was so far above me ? At that moment, Amy, dear, I felt that I was the plainest, most commonplace woman in existence ; and—will you believe the human heart is capable of such base intricacies ? began to look jealously upon every pretty woman in the room who possessed in this respect chances so much greater than my own. ‘ If you do not think that I am a fit subject for the Commissioners in Lunacy to t ake note of after this confession, your forbearance reaches even unto the ideal of friendship, so rarely to be met with in this terrestrial sphere of perpetual disappointments.’ ‘ I was surrounded shortly after the gentlemen came into the room, and could scarcely disguise the boredom I felt, until that most pertinacious of men, William Blakeney, who vows he will never take my “No” for an answer, worried me to death by asking me why I was out of spirits —was it the weather, &c—until I became so irritated that I rose from my seat and left him. ‘To my dismay, as I was crossing the room, I found Mr Faithfull’s eyes intently fixed on me, as if he had been watching my proceedings, and was striving to read my character. He turned away as soon as he saw I noticed him, but throughout the evening I observed him bent on the same study, until I became so conscious and embarrassed I did not know what to do; for the odd part of it was, he never once spoke to me. He only flung about me a chain of fascination, from which I found it impossible to escape. ‘He remained with the Nugents for a time, and then removed to his club, I imagine. I saw him frequently. He never sought, and he never avoided me ; while l—and this, Amy, is my shame and torment—could not hide from him how much I felt. He must have seen it in my face each time we met. How I have detested—how I abhor myself when I remember that it is I who am the wooer, and he just suffers my attentions. Our positions are entirely reversed, and the worst of it is, I can no more help its being so than the poor little needle, or the miserable steel-filing, can help being attracted by the magnet. He visits at our house, is liked by my family, I each day growing more and more feverish and impatient for some sign of preference, which, alas !he never gives. Polite he always is, but as cold as death; while I, poor lost soul that I am, have grown more hopelessly infatuated than ever, until I fear I am fast becoming a monomaniac. ‘This, dear Amy, is my miserable story, which I have been wishing some time to confide to you, Clytie looks mournfully at me, as though she said: “I, too, suffered as you do ; they suffer most whose natures are strongest to love most, for they are faithful even unto death.” Is his name to be woven thus into my life ? God forbid ! And yet, unmaidenly as the speech may sound to other ears than yours, I know but too well that his name will be woven into my life, whether as faithful unto death in sorrow. or worn with joy for ever. Adieu !’ {To he continued,.)