LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 878, 18 April 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE MYSTERY OF NO. 7. (By Johnny Ludlow.) ( Concluded.) Miss Deveen's carriage bowled past the door to take her up at the linen-draper's. Wishing Owen good-day, I was going out, but drew back to make room for two people who were entering : an elderly woman in a close bonnet, and a young one with a fair, pretty, and laughing face. ' My mother, and Fanny, sir,' he vrhiapered. ' She is very pretty, very nice, Owen,' I said, impulsively. ' You'll be sure to be happy with her.' ' Thank you, sir ; I think I shall. I wish you had spoken a word or two to her, Mr Johnny ; you'd have seen how nice she is.' ' I can't stay tow, Owen. I'll come again.' Not even to Miss Deveen did I speak of what I had heard. I kept thinking of it as we drove round Hyde Park, and she told me I was unusually silent. ***** The thread was unwinding itself more and more. Once it had set on a lengthening, I suppose it could not stop. Accident led to an encounter between Matilda and Thomas Owen. Accident? No, it was this same thread of destiny. There's no such thing as accident in the world. During the visit to the linendraper's, above spoken of, Miss Ueveen bought a gown for Matilda. Feeling in her own heart sorry for the girl, thinking she had been somewhat hardly done by in her house, what with Hall and the rest of them, she wished to make her a present on leaving as a token of her good will. But the quantity of stuff bought proved not to be sufficient : Miss Deveen had her doubts upon the point when it was cut off, and she told Matilda to go herself andjget two yards more. This it was, this simple incident, that led to the meeting with Owen. And I was present at it. The money-order office of the district was situated amidstj this colony of shops. In going down there one afternoon to cash an order, I overtook Matilda. She was on her her way to buy the additional yards of stuff ' I suppose 1 am going right, sir ?' she said to me. ' I don't know much about this neighbourhood.' ' Not know much about it! What, after having lived in it more than a year !' ' I have hardly ever gone out; except to church on a Sunday,' she answered. ' And what few articles I've wanted in the dress line, I have most'y bought at the little draper's shop round the corner.' Hardly had the words left her lips, when we came face to face with Thomas Owen. Matilda gave a kind of smothered cry, and stood "stock still, gazing at him. What they said to one another in that first moment, I did not hear. Matilda had a scared look, and was whiter than death. Presently we were all walking together towards Thomas Owen's, he having invited Matilda to go and see his home. But there was another encounter first. Standing at the grocer's door was pretty l<anny Valentine. She and Matilda recog nised each other, and clasped hands. It appeared to me that Matilda did it with suppressed reluctance, as though it gave her no pleasure to meet her relatives. She must have known how near they lived to Miss Deveen's, and yet she had never sought them out. Perhaps the very fact of not wishing to see them had kept her from the spot. They all sat down in the parlour behind the shop-a neat room. Mrs Owen was out; her son produced some wine. I stood up by -he bookcase, telling them I must be off the next minute to the post office. But tin ninutes passed, and I stayed on. How he led up to it, I hardly know ; but, lefore I was prepared for anything of the Kind, Thomas Owen had plunged wholesale .nto the subject of Jane Cross, recounting

the history of that night, in all its minute details to Fanny Valentine. Matilda, sitting back on the far side of the room in an armchair, looked terror stricken : her face seemed to be turning into stone. ' Why da you begin about that. Thomas Owen V she demanded, when words at length came to her. 'lt can have nothing to do with Fanny.' ' I have been wishing to tell it her for some little time, and this seems to be a fitting opportunity,' he answered, coolly resolute. ' You, being better acquainted with the matter than I, can correct me if I make any blunders. I don't care to keep secrets from FanDy : she is going to be my wife.' Matilda's hands lifted themselves with a convulsive movement and fell again. Her eyes flashed fire. ' Your wife ?' 'lf you have no objection,' he replied. 'My dear old mother goes into Wales next month, and Fanny comes here in her place.' With a cry, faint and mournful as that of a wounded dove, Matilda put her hands before her face and leaned back in her chair. If she had iu truth loved Thomas Owen, if she loved him still, the announcement must have caused her cruel pain. He resumed his narrative; assuming as facts what he had in his own mind conceived to have been the case, and by implication, but not directly, charging Matilda with the crime. It had a dreadful effect upon her; her agitation increased with every word. Suddenly she rose up in the chair, her anus lifted, her face dist rted. One of those tits of passion had come on. We had a dreadful scene Owen was powerful, I of not much good, but we could not hold her. Fanny ran sobbing into her own door and sent in two of the shopmen. It was the climax in Matilda Valentine's life. One that perhaps might have been always looked for. From that hour she was an insane woman, her ravings beino- interspersed with lucid intervals. During one of these, she disclosed the truth. She had loved Thomas Owen with a passionate love. Mistaking the gossip and the nonsense that the young man was fond of (mattering to her and Jane cross, she believed her love was returned. On the day preceding the tragedy, when talking with him after morning service, she had taxed

him with paying more attention to Jane Cross than to herself. Not a hit of it, he had lightly answered ; he would take her for a walk by the sea, shore that evening if she liked to go. But, whether he had meant it or not, he never came, though Matilda dressed herself to be in readiness. On the contrary, he went to church, met Jane there, and walked the best part of the way home with her. Matilda jealously resented this ; her mind was in a chaos ; she began to susspect that it was Jane Cross he liked, not herself. She said a word or two upon the subject to Jane Cross on the next day, Monday ; but Jane made sport of it -laughed it off. So the time went on to the evening, when they were upstairs together, Jane sewing, Matilda writing. Suddenly Jane Cross said that Thomas Owen was coming along, and Matilda ran to the window. They spoke to him as he passed, and he said he would look in as he returned from Munpler. After Matilda's letter to her brother was finished, she began a note to Thomas Owen, intending to reproach him with not keeping his promise to her and for joining Jane Cross instead. It was the first time she had ever attempted to write to him ; and she stuck her work b >x with the lid open behind the sheet of paper that Jane Cross might not see what she was doing. When it got dusk, Jane Cross remarked that it was blind man's holiday, and that she would go on down and put the supper. In crossing the room, work basket in hand, she passed behind Matilda, glanoed at her let'er, and saw the first words of it, ' Dearest Thomas Owen.' In sport, she snatched it up, read the rest where her own name was mentioned, and laughingly began, probably out of pure fun, to plague Matilda. ' Thomas Owen your sweetheart!' she cried, running out on the landing. ' Why, he is mine. He cares more for my little finger than for ' Poor girl ? She never finished her sentence. Matilda, fallen into one of those desperate fits of passion, had caught her up and was clutching her like a tiger-cat, tearing her hair, tearing pieces out of her gown. The scuffle was but brief : almost in an instant Jane Cross was falling headlong down the well of the staircase, pushed over the very low balustrades by Matilda, who threw the work basket after her. The catastrophe sobered her passion For a while she lay on the landing in a sort of faint, all strength and power taken out of her as usual by the frenzy. Then she went down to look after Jane Cross. Jane was dead. Matilda, not unacquainted with the aspect of death, saw that at once, and her senses pretty nearly deserted her again with remorse and horror. She had never thought to kill Jane Cross, hardly to harm her, she liked her too well: but in those moments of frenzy she had not the slightest control ov r her actions. Her first act was to run and lock the side door in the garden wall, lest anyone should come in. How she lived through the next half hour, she never knew. Her superstitious fear of seeing the dead Edmund Peahern in the house was strong—and now there was another one! But, with all her anguish and her fear, th instinct of preservation was making itself heard. What must she do? How could she throw suspicion off herself ? She could not run out of the house and say, ' Jane Cross has fallen accidentally over the stairs ; come and look to her'—for no one would have believed it to be an accident. And there were the pieces, too, she had clutched out of the gown! While thus deliberating, the gate bell rang, putting her into a state of the most intense terror. It rang again. Trembling, pauting, Matilda stood cowering in the kitchen, but it did not ring a third time. This was, of course, Thomas Owen. Necessity is the mother of invention. Something she must do, and her brain hastily concocted the plan she should adopt. Putting the cloth and the bread andcheese on the table, she took the jug and went out at the front door to fetch the usual pint of ale. A moment or two she stood at the front door, peering up and down the road to make sure that no one was passing. Then she slipped out, locking the door softly ; and, carrying the key concealed in the hollow of her hand, she threw it amidst the shrubs at No 1. Now she could not get into the house herself; she would not have entered it aloiu for the world: people must break it open. \ll along the way to the post office, to which she really did go, and then to the Swa", she was mentally rehearsing her tale. And it gucceeded in deceiving us all, as the reader

knows. With regard to the visit of her brother on the Wednesday, she had told Thomas Owen the strict truth; though, when he first alluded to it in the churchyard, her feelings were wrought up to such a pitch that she could only cry out and escape. But how poor Matilda contrived to live on and carry out her invented story, how she bore the inward distress and repentance that lay upon her, we shall never know. A. distress, remorse, repentance that never quitted her, night or day ; and which no doubt contributed to gradually unhinge her mind, and to throw it finally off its balance. Suoh was the true history of the affair at No 7, which had been so great a mystery to Saltwater. The truth was never made public, save to the very few who were specially interested in it. Matilda Valentine is in the asylum, and likely to remain there for life; while Thomas Owen and his wife flourish in sunshine, happy as a summer's day. A WINTER'S TALE. By R. E. Mtjlley. " Wonder on till truth makes all things X>lain.'' Midsummer Night's Bream, act v. sc. I. Caercombe on a sunny dav is one of the pleasantest of English watering-places all the year round. It has no settled season, but is probably at its best in winter, for there it is possible even in December to catch a glimpse of the sunshine and warmth of the departed summer that still clings about the place. Eveu then, on the pier and in the streets, people stroll about in the desultory fashion of those who have taken a spell of idleness and mean to enjoy it. It is difficult to believe that daily work or regular occupation are ever undertaken there, for even the residents are infected by the pervading spirit of indolence, and are in the habit of going out at hoim in the morning that quite preclude the possibility of settling down to anything for the rest of the day. Such, is its line weather aspect, but on wet days it is a wilderness, a desolation ; streets an 1 pier alike are deserted, left to the invadeis. the wind and rain, who take possession of it for a while, until routed by the returning sunshine, which is sure to come back atter a day two Sometimes on a wet winter day, there is a heavy gale blowing, a few of the most adventurous visitors defy both rain and wind, and struggle on to the cliffs to see the sea break against the neighbouring coast ; and some havs evidently done so this stormy December morning, for two people are plodding along under one umbrella down the road which leads into that quarter of Caercombe where all the lodging-houses flourish. The couple present a wofully bedraggled appearance ; the girl's waterproof clings to her, heavy with the wet dripping from it, a lock of bright hair that has blown from under her hat hangs over her shoulder wet and shining, and her boots are muddy to her ankles. A wretched object one might be tempted to call her, but that her cheeks are dimpling with smiles, and that she laughs heartily as each gust of wind threatens to tear her away from her companion's arm, to which she clings desperately, trying to keep pace with his long strides. ' Do I walk too fast ?' he asks, holding the umbrella tight with both hands in front of their faces, in hope of sheltering her more from the rain. 'You do, rather,' she says. 'But look, there are our lodgings just down there ; only a few steps more and I shall be at home. Oh, dear, what will Uncle Tom say to my coming back such a fright ? He said it wasn't fit for me to go, but I would.' She points to a house a little farther down, and as she does so the door opens, and on the threshold they can see a tall soldierlylooking old gentleman. He looks down the road first towards the pier, and then, with a quick ' right-about face ' sort of movement, veers round and looks in the opposite direction. By this time the umbrella has arrived in front of the door, and the girl, slipping from under its shelter, runs up to him, cryißg ' , ~« ' 0 uncle Tom, while I was on the cliffs my umbrella was blown right away into the sea, and this gentleman, who was passing at the time, kindly offered me his. and brought me back This is my uncle, Colonel Hursley,' she says to the owner of the umbrella, who, after raising his hat, is about to go away. ' Please stop ; I am sure he will wish to thank you for taking such care of me.' After this speech Colonel Hursley has no choice but to repeat his niece's assertion courteously, but with a certain stiffness of manner that is not unnoticed by the young man. ' It is nothing,' he stammers ; ' I could do no less.' Then he remembers they have walked home arm in arm all the way, and as the young lady and himself are strangers to each other, he feels bound to proffer some explanation. ' I found her in the pelting rain, out by the Cove, wet through, and as she could not stand against the wind I ventured to offer her my arm, and bring her home.' ' If it hadn't been for him, Uncle Tom, I should have been there still,' says Miss Seaton, from her stand in the hall, where she is taking off her waterproof. 'Go up-stairs and change your things,' says Colonel Hursley imperatively to his niece. 'Go up-stairs at once !' he repeats, as the girl trie* to slip past him to the door, and divining it is her intention to shake hands with the young man on the step, he stands so that he blocks up the narrow passage, and she has to content herself with a friendly nod and smile as she says, ' Good-bye ; I sha'n't forget your kindness.' Then she goes away as she is bidden, but she stops on tne landing, and peeps through the belusters at her uncle and her new acquaintance. The latter has come inside, and they are talking quite amicably, and Miss Phemie Seaton indulges in a pleased little laugh wheu she hears Colonel Hursley say, ' You really must stay to luncheon, or I shall think you owe me a grudge for my ingratitude. I fear I treated you with scant courtesy; but I was horrified to set that child come home with a stranger. It might have been most awkward ; there is no knowing who one may pick up at a place like this. I could not tell at a glance who you were, o uld I, Mr Kennicote ?' ' Well, no ; bu> I bear no malice, I as-sure you. I shall be delighted to faccept both your offers,' replies the other. (To he continued.)