LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 740, 2 November 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

—♦ - BY THE SAD SEA WAVES, t ( Concluded?) ‘Joyce, Walter Joyce,’ I say, ‘ex-captain. Once, by courtesy, gentleman.’ ‘Walter Joyce!’ he exclaims, staring at her. ‘ And you are his wife ? Heaven help you !’ She wrings her hands, and looks up at him with wide, tearless eyes. All her coquetries are gone, all her pretty, bewildering looks and smiles.

‘ Forgive me,’ she says, humbly. ‘ Never ! ’ The word seems to be wrung from the depth of a despairing heart. ‘ Knowing all this, why could you not have let me alone ? ’ he asks—* have checked me when jou saw what you were becoming to me ? ’

* Because I—l grew to care for you,’ she says, in her recklessness, her white lips smiling faintly. ‘ Because I. never knew what happiness was until you came. I was very wicked, I know; Deborah there is thinking me more wicked still for avowing it. But this is the end of all.’ In her sad eyes stands the ghost of the dead and gone past. Mr Daine, looking down upon her with strange compassion, catches up his breath with a sob. ‘ Jasper, Jasper ! Only forgive me.’

The silence is dreadful. I can’t bear these scenes; I was not made for them. Her head falls in despair. All in a moment he folds her to him.

‘lf that be true, if you do love me, why, then, all may be well. Why should he stand between us ?—that base, bad man who has wrecked your life ? ’ I put out my hand, aghast. Ottalie, aghast too, turns her white face to him inquiringly. ‘ Don’t you see that it is not an ordinary case ?’ he asks, ‘ What does it signify that a few carping Puritans may carp at it ? Ottalie, my dear one, come with me 1 I can make you happy now and always. ’ He waves me aside. I stand aside, and wait. It seems to me like an eternity; but I know I can trust Ottalie.

She frees herself slowly from him. ‘ Goodbye, dear love,’ she whispers, ‘ Good-bye ?he echoes. ‘ What do you mean 1 You cannot, you will not, send me away, Ottalie ’ ‘I am his—wife,’ she whispers, drawing a long, quivering breath. ‘lt is a pity you did not remember that sooner,’ he says, his angry mood returning. But the next moment he is drawing her to him again. ‘Eemembered it before you played with me.’ ‘ I know it,’ she says, humbly. ‘ But if I played with you it was dangerous play ; for —I think I have wounded myself to death. ’ ‘Ottalie, forgive me,’ he cries; ‘I think I am going mad. Ottalie ’ ‘ No, no, no ! don’t tempt me, please,’ she sobs, leaving him where he stands. * Go, Mr Daine; please go, for all is over. And I would ask you to forget me if —but no, don’t forget me quite,’.she breaks.off, with a cry of pain ; * not quite, not quite. Only try not to—to blame me more than you can help. ’ Her tears break out at last between the dry sobs. His only answer is to snatch her to him and kiss her frantically—her face, her slender hands, even her hair.

‘Go,’ she gasps out, ‘ please go, Jasper.’

And go lie does. And the next morning, before Sone is well astir, Ottalie and 1 and our boxes go off like the shame-faced things we are. * * *, * *

The sea-shore again. More sand and fewer houses than atSone; we are a hundred miles from that delectable spot. Sone was not much ; but this —who shall describe its dreariness ? Sometimes I think I cannot bear it. It is the fag-end of the world; hardly anything but the lighthouse to see. Weeks have passed since we came; the signs of winter are at hand. What shall we do when the winter comes 1 lam sitting on the doorstep, and Ottalie is walking up and down as if she had been wound up and warranted to go so many hours. Her eyes are fastened on the sea, and her long grey skirt stirs the leaves that lie dead on the path. ‘l’d just as soon be in my grave as here,’ I groan—for in truth all things wear a cruel aspect to me to-day. Ottalie stops to speak. * Deborah, don’t! please don’t. We must stay here. It is a safe retreat; no one knows it. I—sometimes 1 fear I am not a good woman; that you know lam not. lam afraid to risk temptation again. Sometimes I wonder whether, if he ’—her voice sinks, and she turns her pale, thin face towards me—‘if he were to find me and ask me the same thing, I should have the strength to say no again. Oh, my mother, if you were but living now,’ she adds, clasping her hands, and taking up her weary tramp again. It is the first time she has alluded to Jasper Daine. The thought exasperates me. I must be getting ill-tempered out of sheer weariness.

‘ I warned you in time, Ottalie. Did I not tell you how it must end ? ’ ‘Yes, I know all that; it is no one’s fault but mine,’ she answers, as her eyes wander out seaward again. The eyes have dark circles perpetually now, and her pretty face has lost its bloom. As a gust of winds lifts her hair I see how sharpened its outline has become.

How dreary this is. And, what is drearier still, every day brings us nearer to that of Captain Joyce’s release. And then? Will lie find us here I Will she die of it ? Oh, Ottalie, Ottalie. If I am cross, it is for her sake.

To and fro still she tramps. I sit on, with my despair, and watch the smoke from the coastguard cottage chimneys curl up against the grey sky, and the last leaves from the solitary row of poplar-trees fall off in the wintry wind. And this is our life. How long will it last / I ask the question of myself as the faint, red sun gleams out for a moment beyond the lighthouse, and then sinks to its rest, sinks, only to rise again on the morrow, to rise and soli on many countless to-nior-rows. Mow Jong ? how long? The sea-gulls flap iuto shore, screeching angrily, and the waves, the sad sea waves, come creeping in slowly over the sands, with a sad, sullen moan, in and in, until the .faint color left by the sun is gone, and night is upon us. Aud all night long I lie on my pillow and listeii to the waves, and cannot sleep. The morning brings a letter. A letter for us ! Only one individual in the wide world. S.o far as I know, is cognisant of our address; the friendly old lawyer, once a relative of my dead mother’s, through whom we get our small income transmitted periodically.

What can he have to say ? It is only the, middle of the quarter. Ottalie, seated opposite to me at the breakfast table, glances at, it with some faint curiosity. ‘Old Weston must have gone in early,’ she remarks, alluding to the distant posttown. ‘He had to fetch something betimes for the lighthouse. ’ The letter is addressed to me, and I open it. As I glance at its contents, a mist gathers before my sight, and I turn sick and faint. Is it right to be glad at a fellowcreature’s death ? I know not. ‘ What is the matter, Deborah ? ’ ‘News. It concerns you.’ j * Concerns me? ’ ‘Yes. Someone is dead.’ She gazes at me with parted lips. * Not ’ she begins, and stops. ‘Yes, he is dead. Your husband has died in prison. ’ I don’t quite remember how we got through the day, except that we hardly exchange two words. What Ottalie feels I know not. lam thankful. ‘ Why, there’s a stranger ! ’ I exclaim in wonder, as I discern some tall man marching down the rugged pathway at evening. A gentleman, too. We had not seen anything of the kind in the place before. Ottalie raises her eyes languidly, and looks out. She knows him in spite of the twilight, and she stands up and locks her lingers one within the other in her emotion. He comes in : Jasper Daine. His form fills up the doorway. Opening his arms, Ottalie falls into them. And I and he do what we can, both, to still her hysterical sobbing, ‘You see, Miss Peyre,’ he says to me, ‘ Fate has been kinder to us than ’ ‘ Than you deserve,’ I put in. ‘Quite so. But, as my wife, I wifi endeavor to shield her in future from life’s troubles and storms. You shall enjoy peace and rest if I can give them to you, my darling Ottalie.’ And the sad sea waves did not sound to me that night so sadly as they had done.. Poor weary Ottalie ! The dark past was over for her ; hope was dawning ; she might be light-hearted once more, even in this world. -1 M. M. W.