LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VII, Issue 746, 9 November 1876, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A MYSTERY OP THE CLIFFS. HER ACCOUNT OF IT. (Concluded.') 'O, wait, wait! I cried. ' I have something that I must tell you, now at once, more wonderful still, for it seems to be part and parcel of what you are relating to me. We never speak of her because it was all bo sad, so dreadful; but I had a sister, a twin sister, so like me in all things—face, height, figure, thought, and soul—that you could hardly tell us apart. She was my darling, my life, my second self—nay, she was myself as much as lam now myself. We hardly ever were apart, never did anything singly, and had not, since we could remember, ever been separated, even for a day, more than twice in our lives. Ab, me, to think that it ever was twice ! But towards the end of August, 1858—three years next month—we were invited to pay a week's visit to an old friend of ours, living at Brixham yonder. But I wag not well, and it was thought better that 1 should not go ; she went, however, and I never saw her alive again. It appears she set off one afternoon (the 23th of AugnaOi whilst on this visit, to walk up to Berry Head—that high land you see over there in the distance—and all we know after that is from a man who was at work in a field not far from the cliff edge.

' He said that between six and seven he saw her walking hastily, but absently, along the path ; her face bent intently on the ground, or perhaps on the glove she seemed trying to pub, on. He merely glanced at her as she passed ; but looking up from his work again almost immediately, he missed her ; and yet t.he path along which she was passing lay straight open to his view for a long way on, (much farther than she could have reached in the time. He thought this strange, and says the idea struck him that something must have happened to her. He wondered where she could bn, and so left his work for a minute, and walked a little way on to where the path forked, one

portion of it ran dangerously close to the cliff edge, and was hardly ever used on that account. He looked over, then he turned, and ran to the nearest house for help, for hf had seen her lyiDg a hundred feet bolow upon the beach.'

The thought of all that followed made it very difficult for me to speak about *it thf;n, and certainly there is no need to write about it now. The anguish and the sorrow we endured caused us never to mention it, except amongst ourselves, and then only with bated breadth. So I don't know how long it might have been ere he would have told me of the fatal accident that befell her, had it not been for this strange coincidence of dates.

Sitting there, in the summer evening, with the quiet and the beauty that surrounded us, hand locked in hand and our hearts one, how could we feel to be impressed and awe-struck—how fail to feel that it was something beyond mere chance which had brought us together ! Had we not before us evidence of that very going forth of spirit to meet spirit of which he had but lately been speaking? Could it be doubted that that second self, that very part of myself, once released from its mortal bonds, had upon the instant flown towards hira, and, by its mere presence in his mind, have served to warn him of danger, and caused him to move away from the treacherous seat in the cliff? where, had he remained but a few minutes more, certain death would have overtaken him, and I for ever have been deprived of the consolation of his love.

By and by, seeing all thiß so clearly, we began to talk calmly and more deliberately about it, and every detail which we compared tended to strengthen our conviction : to wit, the dress she wore, the counterpart of this I had on, and what has always been our simple country taste and preference, was identical with that in which she had come before his mental vision.

'Yet,' said I, ' it was but spirit after all, an image born of your brain, impalpable, invisible really, except there; your actual eye never rested on her real form —that lay at that very moment hundreds of miles away, inert and cruelly crushed, almost past recognition; the hour when she was killed, between six and seven, corresponding exactly, aa it does, leaves no doubt of that.'

1 Ah, dear child,' he said, ' I should agree with you of course; my matter-of-fact nature would not hesitate for a moment on such a point were it not that I hold a piece of positive, palpable, material evidence that what I saw was something more than a mere phantom of the mind, though how to account for it is beyond me.' Then he told me of the glove, of which, in his excitement, he had said nothing hitherto. I confess that this indeed made me waver.

' And you have it still V I asked. ' Certainly, though I have never looked at it since the hour I sealed it up at Dryley. I come across the paokets containing it constantly in my desk; it is there safe enough, you shall see it for yourself; we will break the seal together and read the date, which I wrote down at the time so that there could be no mistake.'

' A gray kid glove, you say, of number six size, with the word " Exeter" stamped inside ? The size we wore assuredly, and the place at which, of course, we always bought our gloves.' ' Yes,' he answered, 'the left-hand glove.' Suddenly now it flashed upon me. When her poor body was brought home, she had on but one glove —that on the right hand: the left was missing, and never was found. *****

We were married within a fortnight from the date of this conversation. He took me straight home to the house in London which he had prepared. Our honeymoon proper was to bekeptin the|LongVacation—the busy man of law could aaatch no earlier leisure—but then we were to go to the Yorkshire coasc, and see the place where ' Booby's Nook' had oDce been nestling in mid-air. Yes ; and we would take the glove with us, and compare and think about it, and try to get; nearer to a solution of the mystery. But the glove? The third evening we were at home he unlocked the old bureau— I was by his side, need I say it ?—and there, in a top drawer, we found a bulgy envelope, sealed with his crest, and indorsed 'Dryley.' ' Ay, but I wrote the date and hour also,' he 'said, 'on ,the piece of paper in which I wrapped the glove. You shall see.'

He broke the seal, and brought forth a sheet of thick writing-paper (the ominous date and hour written upon it in hia own hand), with something soft inside it; and indeed, before us, there lay a small left-hand kid glove, pale gray in color, No 6 in size, and the word ' Exeter' stamped inside. Who can describe the mingled feelings struggling for utterance in each of our hearts 1 O, how vividly my old grief lived again for the first few moments that I held the glove—touched it with my fingers and put it to my lips ! Had she once held this very glove I —was it possible 1 Bah ! no. In an instant there flashed through my mind a solution of this item of the mystery ; this part of it was at least coincidence, nothing more. I looked at my husband ; he was greatly moved. At last he glanced np at me and, said,

'Soeptical still, my wife? with such a proof as that before you ? This is her glove ; she was suffered to appear to me—for what purpose you best know. If not—why, all life's a dream, and there are no such things as facts.'

' Good lawyer that you are, dear,' I answered, 'I shall outwit you. "Sou have overlooked a weighty piece of evidence. Do you not remember that the coastguardsman spoke of a picnic on that headland, and of a young lady going and sitting in "Booby's Nook ?" This glove was hers, and nevor belonged to my darling. Now I Hook at it again it is not our color quite ; other people buy gloves at Exeter, other people wear "sixes;" and though it is wouderfully strange that such a thing should have been dropped in such a place, for you to lind at such a pass, still coincidence will account for it—it must, it does.' He rose, walked up and down the room for a moment or two ; then stopping in front of me, with a very comical expression on h:s face, said : ' It is clear, then, that you think me a "booby," the veritable Booby of the Nook?'

' No, dear,' I answered, ' ipc enough has happened to justify our wonder, and make ixs doubt whether what some of us in our blindness call. " chance " is not often pari of, the great system which regulates our lives. Others who have experienced marvels equal to these believe that

it is. Whether wrought out by mere coincidence (as we see part of what has happened in our own case has been), or whether by what in called " spiritual agency," they believe, as you admit and believe, that throughout the vast mysterious universe spirits that are akin are for ever struggling to meet. Then, once within the spell that hallows such a meeting, who shall say what may not be felt, orwh <ttricks the imagination may not play us, cumbered as it is here with the weight of material things ? If it was bnt chance that brought us together, yon at least saw the ghost of it, and by the ghost of it were saved.' He accepted my interpretation; and now I have done his bidding and finished bis story. That our spirits were akin, whether or not they were drawn together in the way described, is proved by the years of happiness we have passed since the day when our hands were joined and our hearts became as one.