LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume V, Issue 581, 29 April 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

STEEPSIDE. A Ghost Stoky. [Continued.) It bore her name written over and over several times, first in rather laboured imitation of her own handwriting, then more successfully, and, lastly, in so perfect a manner that even Julia herself was almost deceived into believing it her genuine sigaature. Then followed several L's and J's, as though the copjdst had not considered those initials satisfactory counterparts of the 01 iginal. Julia wondered, but did not doubt; and as she tossed the fragment from her hand, Virginie turned and perceived the action. Instantly a deep flush of crimson overspread the maid's face; she darted suddenly forward, and uttered an exclamation of alarm. Her cry was immediately succeeded by the sharp noise of a pistol-report beneath the window, and a heavy, muffled sound, as of the fall of a body upon the snow-covered earth. Julia looked out in fear and surprise. The leaping firelight from within the room streamed through the window, and, in the heart of its vivid brightness, revealed the figure of a man lying motionless upon the whitened ground, his face buried in the scattered snow, and his outstretched hand grasping a pistol. Julia leaped through the open casement with a wild shriek, and ilung herself on her knees beside him.

' Phil! Phil!' she said, ' what have you done ? what has happened ? Speak to me.' But the only response was a faint, low moan.

Phillip Brian had shot himself ! In an agony of grief and horror Julia lifted his head upon her arm, and pressed her hand to his heart. The movement recalled him to life for a few moments ; he opened his eyes, looked at her, and uttered a few broken words. She stooped and listened eagerly. ' The letter !' he gasped ; ' the letter you sent me ! 0 Julia., you have broken my heart. How could you be false to me, and I loving you —trusting you so wholly. But at least I shall not live to see you wed the man you have chosen; I 'came here to-night to die, since without you life would be intolerable. See what you have done.' Desperate and silent, she wound her arms around him, and pressed her lips to his. A convulsive shudder seized him; his eyes rolled back, and with a sigh he resigned himself to the death he had courted so madly. Death in the passion of a last kiss. Julia sat still, the corpse of her lover supported on her arm, and her hand clasped in his, tearless and frigid as though she had been turned into stone by some fearful spell. Half hidden in the bosom of his vest was a letter, the broken seal of which bore her own monogram. She plucked it out of its resting place, and read it hastily by the flicker of the firelight. It was in Lady Sarah's handwriting, and ran thus : ' My Deak Mb Brian,

' Although, when last wc parted, it was with the usual understanding that tonight wc should meet again; yet subsetjuent reflection, and the positive injunction of my parents, have obliged me to decide otherwise. You are to know, therefore, that in obedience to the wishes of my father and mother, I have promised to become the wife of the gentleman they have chosen for mo. .All corr. spondencc between us must therefore wholly cease, nor must you longer sull'er yourself to entertain a thought of me. It is harUy necessary to add that I shall not expect to see you this evening; your own sense of honour will, I am persuaded, be suilicient to restrain you from keeping an appointment against my wishes. In concluding, I beg you will not attempt to obtain any further explanation of my conduct: but rest assurred that it is the unalterable resolve of cocl and earnest deliberation. 1 For the last time I subscribe myself ' Julia Lokkington. 'Postscript—ln order to save you any doubt of my entire and willing concurrence in my mother's wishes, I sign and address this with my own hand, and Virginie, who undertakes to deliver it, wi'l add her perj sonal testimony to the truth of these state-

ments, since she has witnessed the writing of the letter, and knows hovv fully my consent has been given to all its expressions. ' With my own hand !' Yes, surely ; both signature and address were perfect fac-similes of Julia's wiiting ! _ What winder that Philip had been deceived into believing her false ? Twice she re a 1 the letter from begining to end ; then she laid her lovei's corpse gently down on the snow, and stood up erect and silent, her face more ghastly and deathlike than the face of the dead beside her.

In a moment the whole- shameful scheme had flashed upon her mind Virginie's treachery and clever fraud ; its connection with the torn fragment of paper which Julia had seen only a few minutes before; the deliberate falsehood of which Lady Sarah had been guilty ; the bribery, by which she had probably corrupted Virginie's fidelity ; the cruel disappointment and suffering of her lover; all these things pressed themselves upon her reeling brain, and gave birth to the suggestions of madness. Stooping down, she put her lithe hand upon the belt of the dead man. There was, as she expected, a second pistol in it, the fellow of that with which he had shot himself. It was loaded. Julia drew it out, wrapped her mantle round it, and climbed noiselessly into her chamber through the still open window. Crossing the room, she passed out into the corridor beyond, and like a shadow swift and silent of foot, to the door of her father's study —an apartment communicating, by means of an oaken door, with the panelled chamber. Virgiuie, from a dark crevice in the wall of the house, had heard and noted all that passed in the garden. She saw Julia open and read the letter ; she caught the expression of her face as she stooped for the pistol, and apprehending something of what might follow, crept through the window after her mistress and pursued her up the dark passages. Here, crouching again into a recess in the gallery outside the panelled room, she waited in terror for the next scene of the tragedy. Julia flung open the door of the study where her father sat writing at his table, and, standing on the threshold in the full glare of the* lamplight which illumined the apartment, raised the pistol, cocked and aimed it. Sir Julian had barely time to leap from his chair with a cry when she fired, and the next instant he fell, struck by 'he bullet on the left temple, aud expired at his daughter's feet. At the report of the pistol and the sound of his fall Lady Sarah quitted her dressing-room, and ran in disordered attire into the study, where she beheld her husband lying dead and bloody upon the floor, and Julia standing at the entrance of the panelled chamber, with the light of madness and murder in her eyes. Not long she stood there, however, for, seeing Lady Sarah enter, the distracted girl threw down the empty weapon, and flinging herself upon her mother, grasped her throat with all the might of her frenzied being. Up and down the room they wrestled together, two desperate women, one bent upon murder, the other battling for her life, and neither uttered cry or groan, so terribly earnest was the struggle. At length Lady Sarah's power gave way; she fell under her assailant's weight, ber face black with suffocation, and her eyes protruding from the swelling sockets. Julia redoubled her grip. She knelt upon Lady Sarah's breast, and held her down with the force aud resolution of a fiend, though the blood burst from the ears of her victim and filmed her staring eyes ; nor did the pitiless fingers relax until the murderess knew her vengeance was complete. Then she leapt to her feet, seized Philip's pistol from the floor, and, with a wild, pealing shriek, fled foith along the gallery, down the staircase, and out into the park—out into the wind, and the driving snow, and the cold : her uncoiled hair streaming in dishevelled masses down her shoulders, and her dress of trailing satin daubed with stains of blood. Behind her ran Virginie, wellnigh maddened herself with horror, vainly endeavauring to catch or to stop the unhappy fugitive. But just as the latter reached the brink of a high precipice at the boundary of the terraced lawn, from which the mansion took its same of ' Steepside,' she turned to look at her pursuer, mi?sed her footing, and fell headlong over the low stone coping that bordoredthe slope into the sn w drift at the bottom of the chasm. Virginie ran to the spot and looked over. The 'steep' was exceedingly high and sudden ; not a trace of Julia could be seen in the darkness below. Doubtless the miserable heiress of the Lorringtons had found a grave in the bed of soft, deep snow which surrounded its base. Then, stricken through heart and brain witli the curse of madness which had already sent her mistress red-handed to death, Virginie Giraud fled across the lawn—through the park-gates—out upon the bleak common beyond, and was gone. * * * * The old priest laid aside the manuscript and took a fresh pinch of rappee from the silver snuff-box. 'Monsieur,' said he, with a pclite inclination of his grey head, I have had the honour to read you the history you wished to hear.' ' And I thank you most heartily for your kindness,' returned I. ' But may I, without danger of seeming too inquisitive, ask you one question more ?' Seeing assent in his face, and a smile that anticipated my inquiry wrinkling the corners of his mouth, I continued boldly, 1 Will you tell me, then, M. Pierre, by what means you became possessed of this manuscript, and who wrote it ?' 'lt is a natural question, monsieur,' he answered after a short pause, ' and I have no good reason for withholding the reply, since every one who was personally concerned in the tragedy has long been dead. You must know, then, that in my younger days T was cure to a little parish, of about i two hundred souls in the province of Berry. Many years ago there came to this village a strange old woman of whom nobody in the place had the least knowledge. She took and rented a small hovel on the borders of a wood about two miles from our church, and, except on market days, when she came to the village for her weekly provisions, none of my parishioners ever held any intercourse with her. Hie was evidently insane, and although she did harm to nobody, yet she often caused considerable alarm and wonderment by her eccentric behaviour. It is, as you must know, often the case in intermittent mania that its victims are insane upon some particular subject, some point upon which their frenzy always betrays itself—even when, with regard to other matters, they conduct themselves like ordinary people. {To te continued)