LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 676, 19 August 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

WHY ARE YOU WANDERING HERE, I PRAY. ( Continued .) * We won’t discuss that question ; it is not one [that concerns you, Georgie thought it concerned her mightily. * With regard to the present one, I think it right to warn you that this young man hasn’t a halfpenny.’

‘ How can you tell that, uucle George ? You say you don’t know him.’ ‘ I know that no Yerschoyle ever had a penny yet. They are all poor, alike in brains and money, ’ ‘ Uncle George, you have no right to say so. I’m a Yerschoyle, and I’m not a fool.’ * No, thanks to your mother and some hereditary qualities transmitted by her. I have never accepted the theory that brains come from the father; experience to my mind, points the other way. And remember, even if you are a Yerschoyle in name, that you have been brought up in a very different school. ’ * I’m a Yerschoyle in name and in feeling too,’ excitedly. ‘ I will never deny my father’s family.’ ‘ Far be it from me to ask %ou to do so, though your father’s family hasn’t shown much anxiety about you. You are nineteen now, I believe ; and so far as I know ’ —a sarcastic emphasis on the verb— ‘ this is the first time they have ever troubled themselves about you. ’ ‘ They couldn’t trouble themselves about me when they didn’t know where I was, and were never told anything of me. You would never let me know anything about them, eitherwith burning cheeks and eyes, and a voice tremulous with excited feeling. ‘ You thought I was so poor a creature that, if I loved them, I couldn’t love you too— ’ She stopped abruptly, unable to control her words, and dashing back indignantly the large tears that welled into her eyes, A compunctious stab went to George Arnold’s heart. All the tenderest emotions in his nature were touched, and he would have spoken kindly and soothingly had he known how. * You are mistaken, child; I never thought so,’ he said in a half apologetic way. * I didn’t know you felt so strongly about your father and his family. I tried to do all I could for you ; and let me explain to you that, if I hadn’t taken you, on your mother’s de ith, I don’t know who would have done so. I did not force you from your father’s family, as you seem to imagine. There was not one of them prepared to receive you; and what I did was in accordance with the expressed wishes of your mother, of whom, however, iu your devotion to your father, you seem never to think.’ * Uncle George, uncle George, you will misunderstand me! I do think of my mother; but I know that she loved my father, and that she would never have wished me to grow up in ignorance of his family.’ ‘ True, child; she did love him as you say. She threw over the affection of years for a red-coat nnd black moustaches ; and I am not surprised at your doing the same, only that in your case there is no affection to throw over,’ bitterly. ‘ Uncle George, when I longed—’ she began excitedlj ; but he again stopped her by that /wave of his hand. * Stay, Georgie; let me finish. Don’t think that I want to separate yon from new friends. Marry this cousin, this Philip Yerschoyle, if you please; only I must again warn you that he is a pauper, and that you have nothing to expect from me. lam a poor man.’ ‘ Oh, it’s too bad, too bad 1* exclaimed the girl; all her susceptibilities deeply wounded not only at the ignominous epithet applied to her cousin, but by the whole tone of her uncle’s remarks. ‘ I never thought of marrying him; never thought of getting your money. I know you have been good, too good to me all these years; and I knew you must be poor, though Mattie and Nellie said you weren’t; and that’s why I never would ask you for any more or better clothes; and I have been grateful to you ; and as to having no affection for you —’ He listened, half in surprise, half in anger to this outburst; and then interrupted : ‘No protestations, Georgie, I beg. I don’t need them, I assure you, I know exactly what you feel for me, and what my feelings towards you are; and I wish you to see that I have no desire to separate you further from your father’s family. Your cousin and your new friend can come here, of course : this is your home as long as you choose. You will nit ask me to appear, I am certain, knowing that visits of ceremony are quite out of my line. But stay; lest you should attribute my not seeing your friends to a want of due observance towards them on my part, I will break through my usual habits for your sake if you will let me know when they are here. I shall be in the garden;’ and he abruptly quitted the room. He had meant to be kind ; but bitterness, not kindness, was in his heart as he left her. She had judged him then, this girl ; had discussed his circumstances and condition with the servants ; had made allowances for him, as the strong do for the weak ; above all, had ‘ read his weakness clear,’ and aimed her ’ shaft straight at the flaw in his character—his jealousy of the Yerschoyles one and all. He was humiliated in his own eyes, but had ‘ grit ’ enough in his nature to carry him safely through the trial. His affection for Georgie did not turn to gall, as it would have done iu a man of less moral strength ; on the contrary, after the first shook of the discovery, it grew in intensity, developing into something higher than it had ever been before.

As to Georgie, in all her short life, no such storm as this had ever swept over her. When her uncle left the room, she clasped her hands over her head, and the tears which she had with difficulty strained before him burst forth with passionate force. She could not know that he had meant to be kind ; and her affection and delicacy were alike wounded by those .cutting reproaches and implied suspicious. The idea of marriage had not once entered her head ; and the mere suggestion of it so overwhelmed her that she felt as if she could never meet Philip again. But even this sensation, strong as it was, paled before the half-angry compunction about her uncle. How was she to make him understand her ? After all he had been her life-friend—father, mother, everything; had given her a home, and devoted himself to her education with unwearying attention. At this moment she felt that she loved him passionately ; yet he bad spoken as though she had no heart, no

gratitude, no affection—she, who had pinod for liberty to show he love by counties! little tender attentions, being scarcely re. strained from so doiug by his repellent manner. She could have made his life so bright had he only let her. Meantime Mattie, weighed down by more than maternal anxiety, and unable longer to curb her curiosity, came in to see how things were progressing. Suspecting the- state of the case, she felt the solitude of matrons of higher degree about Georgie’s eyes, damaged by much weeping. They were, indeed, in a pitiable condition, and, in spite ot a copious application of cold water, presented a sad spectacle when her visitors were seen approaching. ‘ I cant go down, Mattie ! Do send them away !’

But Mattie wouldn’t hear of such a thing, * You must go down, Miss Georgie, like a lady as you are, just as if nothing had happened. Even if people see that something has happened, they won't take notice; that’s how ladies do; and you must talk and say you’re glad to see them, and your eyes will soon get better.’ Thus Mattie; so Georgie had to go down, trusting that no one would * take notice.’

Philip’s good manners unfortunately were not of the stoical type described by the old lady. At sight of the pale face and red eyes, his own features lengthened perceptibly. * What is it ?’ he whispered anxiously, retaining her hand. ‘ I will tell you presently,’ she said summoning all her courage and philosophy to her aid, together with all the blood of all the Verschoyles, which on this critical occasion must not be allowed to belie itself. The body of the party had stayed outside with the dogs and pony-carriage; only Julia, her sister, and Philip had come in ; and so apparent were the- traces of a domestic storm, that the two first, at all events, devoutly wished themselves away again. * I didn’t ask for Mr Arnold,’ said Philip; ‘ I thought I would be guided by you in the matter.’

‘ Thanks. If we are going to Rufus’s Stone—l think you said you would like me to show you the way—wouldn’t it make us rather late ? It is a long walk; and another day might be better, as he is in the garden.’ For a novice this was pretty well—Philip was lost in admiration of the tact displayed —and the reprieve was too gratefully accepted. ‘ I will leave a card ; wouldn’t that be well ?’ he suggested; and Georgie acquiesced as if leaving cards had been familiar to her from her infancy. She had resolved that nothing would induce her to send for her uncle to make acquaintance with her * new friends.’

Utterly wretched, dispirited—her cheeks and. eyes smarting from her recent team, and feeling (though fortunately not looking) altogether abject she started for Rufus’s Stone, which is not a stone at all, however, as far as appearance is concerned but a triangular # iron erection, singularly hideous, and suggestive of nothing so much as a substantial millstone. A stone is popularly supposed to lurk beneath the iron ; but so far as historic suggestiveness goes, the Red King might as well have been killed on Salisbury Plain. However, there’s not a man, woman, or child in all the forest who doesn’t devoutly believe in the whole thing ; the Stone and the tree, and Purkiss, the charcoal-burner, who dragged away the body, represented in this year of our Lord by an old woman, sole survivor of the noble race of Purkiss.

Georgie, in spite of sundry sneers from her uncle, liked to believe in it all too; though she commented scornfully on the relics left by thousands of pilgrims who made their yearly obliations at the Eed King’s shrine—obliations consisting of scraps of newspaper, greasy withal and redolent of sandwiches and ginger-beer. But not even the torn Telegraphs, dirty orange-peel, and bare bones could do away with the beauty of the forest scenery, the giant oaks, and spreading beeches, and dwarf hollies with their glossy leaves and friendly prickles. They all admired the scene, and execrated the tourists and jumped, to the imminent peril of their noses, in the vain effort to see the real stone inside its iron casing, though what the real stone had to do with William Rufus, no one would be bold enough to stay. By this time Georgie’s eyes had recovered to some extent their normal appearance, and she had told Philip something of what had passed between her and her uncle,—something, but not all. How could she tell him that he was accused of being a pauper, and of a design to marry her ? * My presence on the scene has not added to your happiness, I’m afraid,’ he said dolefully, adding a remark about an ‘ old curmudgeon.’ ‘ Curmudgeon ! What’s that ?’ asked Georgie. ‘ A disagreeoble old fellow,’ he answered, laughing a little. ‘ Well, he is disagreeable; but you musu’t dislike him too much, for my sake. He .has been so kind to me, and I am so unhappy about his being angry.’ ‘ I suppose you, yvould throw any fellow in the world over for him,’ rather gloomily. ‘ Throw over, throw over ? Why should you use such an expression, or think auch a thought ? One’s heart can take in more than one affection.’

‘ No, it can’t,’ he retorted quickly; ‘ not of the absorbing kind, I mean. ’ *ls one, then, never to love but one person ?’ she asked. ‘ O Georgie, Georgie!’ he exclaimed, laughing in spite of himself. ‘ 0 Philip, Philip ! you want to be as exacting as uncle George. But perhaps that is men’s way, is it ? I know so little of them. ’

To he continued.