LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 809, 25 January 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

HER LAST APPEARANCE. Chapter I,—Her Temptation. ' He is a scoundrel,' said the gentleman. ' He is my husband,' answered the lady. N>t much in either sentence, yet both came from bursting hearts and lips passionpale. ' Is that your answer, Barbara!' ' The only answer God and man will suffer me to give you.' ' And he is to break your heart—and squander your earnings on bis low vices—■ keep you shut up in this shabby lodging while all the town is raving about your beauty and genius—and you are to have no redress, no escape ? ' 'Yes,' she answered with a look that thrilled him; 'I shall escape him in my coffin. My wrongs will have redress —at the Day of Judgment.' ' Barbara, he is killing you.' ' Don't you think that the greatest kindness he has ever shown me ? ' Tho gentleman began to pace the room distractedly. The lady turned < to the tall narrow glass over the chimney-piece, with a curious look, half mournful, half scornful. She was contemplating the beauty which was said to have set the town raving. What did that tarnished mirrow show her ? A small pale face, wan and wasted by studious nights and a heavy burden of care, dark shadows about dark eyes, bit such eyes ! They seemed, in this cold light of day, too black and large and brilliant for the small white face; but at night, in thy lamp lit theatre, with a patch of rouge under them, and the light ot genius burning in them, they were the most dazzling, soulensnaring eyes man had ever seen: or so said the cognoscenti, Horace Walpole among them ; and Mrs Barbara Stowell was the last fashion at Covent Garden Theatre.

It was only her second season on those famous boards, and her beauty and talent still wore the bloom of novelty. The town had never seen her by daylight. She never drove in the Ring, or appeared at a fashionable auction, or mystified her admirers at a masquerade in the Pantheon, or drank whey in St James's Park—in a word, she went nowhere —and the town had invented twenty stories to account for this secluded existence. Yet no cne had guessed the truth, which was sadder than the most dismal fiction that had floated down the idle stream of London gossip. Barbara Stowell kept aloof from the world for three reasons —first, because her husband was a tyrant and a ruffian, and left her without a sixpe ice - secondly, because her heart was brokea—thirdly, because she was dying. This last reason was only known to herself. No stethoscope had sounded that aching breast—no stately physician, with eye-glass and gold-headed cane, and chariot and footman, had been called in to testify in scientific language to the progress of the destroyer but Barbara Stowell knew very well that her days were numbered, and that her span of life was the briefest. £he was not in the first freshness of her youth. Three years ago she had been a country parson's daughter, leading the peacefullest, happiest, obscurest life in a Hertfordshire village—when, as ill-luck would have it, she came to London to visit an aunt who was in business there as a millinei-, and at this lady's house met Jack Stowell, an actor of small parts at Covent Garden—a cold-hearted rascal with a fine person, a kind of surface cleverness which had a vast effect upon simple people, and ineffable conceit. He had the usual idea of the unsuccessful actor, that his manager was his only enemy, and that the town was languishing to sej him play Romeo, and Douglas, and the whole string of youthful heroes. His subordinate position soured him ; and he sought conso lation from drink and play, and was about as profligate a specimen of his particular genus as could be found in the purlieus of Bow street. But he knew how to make himself agreeable in society, and passed for a " mighty pretty felloAv " He had the art of being sentimental too on occasion, could cast up his eyes to heaven and affect a mind all aglow with honor and manly feeling. Upon this whited sepulchre Barbara wasted the freshness of her yo«ng life. He was caught by her somewhat singular beauty, which was rather that of an old Italian picture than of a rustic Englishwoman. Beauty so striking and peculiar would make its mark, he thought. With such a Juliet he could not fail as Romeo. lie loved her as much as his staled and withered heart was capable of loving ; and he foresaw his own advantage in marrying her. So, with a little persuasion and a great many sweet speeches stolen from the British Drama, he broke down the barriers of duty, and wrung from the tearful, blushing girl a hasty consent to a Fleet marriage, which was solemnised before she had time to repent that weak moment of concession. The milliner was angry, for she had believed Mr Stowell her own admirer, and, although too wise to think of him as a husbaud, wished to retain him a suitor. The parson was furious, and told his daughter she had taken the first stage to everlasting destruction without his Knowledge, and might go the rest of tho way without his interference. She had a step-mother who was very well disposed to widen the breach, and she saw little hope of reconciliation with a father who had never erred on the side of fondness. So she began the world at twenty years of age, with Jack Stowell for her husband and only friend. In the firso flush and glamour of a girlish and romantic love, it seemed to her sweet to have him only, to have all Iter world of love and hope bound up in this one volume. 'This fond and foolish dream lasted less than a month. Bsfore that moon which had shone a pale crescent in the fair summer sky of her wedding night had waxed and waned, Barbara knew that she was married to a drunkard and a gambler, a brute who was savage in his cups, a profligate who had lived amongst degraded women until he knew not what womanly purity meant, a wretch who existed only for self-gratification, and whoso love for her had been little more than the fancy of an hour,

He lost no time in teaching her all he knew of his art. She had real genius, was fond of study, and soon discovered that he knew very little. She had her own ideas about all thc.se heroines of which he only knew the merest conventionalities and traditions. She sat late into the night studying, while ho was drinking and punting in some low taveru. Her sorrows, her disappointments, her disgusts, drove her to the study of the drama for consolation and temporary forgetfulness. These heroines o| tragedy,

who were all miserable, seemed to sympathise with her own misery. She became passionately fond of her art before ever she had trodden the stage. Jack Stowell took his wife to Ttich, and asked for an engagement. Had Barbara been an ordinary woman, the manager would have given her a subordinate nlace in his troupe, and a pittance of twenty shil lings a week. But her exceptional beauty struck the managerial eye. He had half-a-dozen geniuses in his company, but their looks were on the wane. This young face, these Italian eyes, would attract the town—and the town had been leaning a little towards the rival house lately. 'l'll tell you what, Stowell,' said the manager, ' I should like to give your wife a chance. But to take any hold upon the public, she must appear in a leading pirt. I couldn't trust her till she has learnt the ABO of her profession. She must try her success in the provinces.' They were standing at noontide on the great stage at Covent Garden. The house was almost in darkness, and the vast circle of boxes shrouded in linen wrappings had a ghostly look that chilled Barbara's soul. What a little creature she seemed to herself in that mighty arena ! Could she ever stand there and pour out her soul in the sorrows of Juliet, or the Duchess of Malfi, or Isabella, as she had done so often before the looking glass in her dingy lodging ? 'Jack,' she said, as they were walking home—he had been unusually kind to her this morning—'l can't tell you what an awful feeling that great, dark, cold theatre gave me. 1 felt as if I was standing in my tomb.'

' That shows what a little goose you arc,' re'orted Jack contemptuously; £ do y..ii think anybody is going to give you such a big tomb as that.' Mrs Stowell appeared at the Theatre Royal, Bath, and tried her wings, as the manager called it, with marked success. There could be no doubt that she had the divine fire, a genius and bent so decided, that her lack of experience went for nothing —and then she worked like a slave, and threw her soul, mind, heart—her who'e being —into this new business of her life. She lived only to act. What else had she to live for, with a husband who came home tipsy three or four nights out of the seven, and whose infidelities were notorious ? She came to London the following winter, and took the town by storm, fl er genius, her beauty, her youth, her purity, were on every tongue. She received almost as many letters as a prime minister in that first season of success—but it was found out in due time that she was inaccessible to flattery, and the fops and fribbles of her day ceased their persecutions. Among so many who admired her and mo many who were eager to pursue, there was only one who discovered her need of pity and pitied her. This was Sir Philip Hazlemere, a young man of fashion and fortune —neither fop nor fribble —but a man of cultivated mind and intense feeling. He saw, admired, and, ere long, adored the new actress—but he did not approach her, as the others did, with fulsome letters which insulted her understanding, or costly gifts which offended her honour. He held himself aloof, and loved in silence for the instinct of his heart told him that she was virtuous. But he was human, and his sense of honor could not altogether stifle hope. He found out where she lived, bought over the lodging-house keeper to his interest, and contrived to learn a great deal more than the well-informed world knew about Barbara Stowell. He was told that her husband was a wretch, and ill used her ; that this brilliant beauty, who shone and sparkled by night like a star, was by daylight a wan and faded woman, haggard with sorrow and tears. If he had loved her before, when the history of her life was unknown to him, he loved her doubly now, and, taking hope from all that made her life hopeless, flung honor to the winds and determined to win her.

Could she be worse off, he asked himself, than she was now—the slave of a low-born profligate—the darliog of an idle, gaping crowd—scorned and neglected at home, where a woman should be paramount ? He was rich and his own master—there was al] the bright glad world before them. He would take her to Italy, and live and die there for her sake, content and happv in the blessing of her sweet companionship, tie had never touched her hand, never spoken to her : but he had lived for the last six months only to see and hear her, and it seemed to him that he knew every thought of her mind, every impulse of her heart. Had he not seen those lovely eyes answer his fond looks sometimes, as he hung over the stage box, and the business of the scene brought her near him, with a tender intelligence that told him he was understood ? If John Stowell should sue for a divorce, so much the better, thought Philip. lie could then make his beloved Lady Hazlemere, and let the world see the crowning glory of his life. He was so deeply in love that he thought it would be everlasting renown to have won Barbara. He would go down to posterity famous as the husband of the loveliest woman of his time; like that Duke of Devonshire of whom the world knows so little except that he had a beautu ful Duchess.

One day Sir Philip Hazlemere took courage, emboldened by some new tale of Jack Stowell's brutality, and got himself introduced to the presence of his beloved. She was shocked at first, and very angry, but his deep respect melted her wrath, ami for the first time in her life Barbara learnfc how reverential, how humble, real love is. It was no bold seducer who had forced himself into her presence, but a man who pitied and honored her, and who would have deemed it a, small thing to shed his blood for her sake, Ho was no stranger to h6r, though she had never heard his voice till t*>-day. She had seen him in the theatre—night after night —and had divined that it was some stronger feeling than love of the drama which held him riveted to the same spot, listening to the same play, however often it might be repeated in the shifting repertoire oi those days. She knew that he loved her, and that earnest look of his had touched her deeply. What was it now for her, who had never known a good man's love, to hear him olFei the devotion of a lifetime, aud sue humbly for permission to carry her away from a life which was most abject misery ! Her heart thrilled as she heard him. Yes, this was true love—this was the glory aun grace of life which she had missed. She could measure the greatness of her loss, nou' that it was too late, She Mtw what pitiful

tinsel she had mistaken for purest gold. But, though every impulse of her heart drew her t> this devoted lover, honor spoke louder than feeling, and made ht r marble. On one only point sHe yielded a little to her lover's pleading. She did not refuse him permission to see her again. He might come sometimes, but it must be seldom, and the hour in which he should forget the respect due to her as a true and loyal wife would be the hour that parted them for ever. r 7fr be continued.']