LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 913, 29 May 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

CAUGHT IN THE REBOUND,

By Annie Thomas.

I had come up t« London, at the age of twenty-two, a formed man, having fully arrived at years of discretion, in appearance: a raw youth, vulnerable to the last degree, in reality. My life had been passed mostly in an old-fashioned remote country town, and partly at a utrict public school. In the former place I had at intervals lived for months without seeing any young girls of my own station in life, save my sisters. At the latter I had had more than one narrow escape from falling a victim to the wiles of some of the laeiing spirits in the rather broadly conducted genteel seminary for young ladies that faced our cricket-ground. However, I had luckily steered clear both of the Scylla of the Seminary and the Oharybdis of the Bar, to which, with other boys, I occasionally stole. And so when at twentytwo I came up to add to my experience in a London lawyer's office, and to pass my final examination, I was free, fetterless, and I fear a littie eager for a legitimate opportunity of making a fool of myself. I came up under pleasant auspices. My father was a sufficiently wealthy man to make me, his eldest son, a liberal aliowance, which not only enabled me to board in a private family of good position, but which also admitted of my keeping a Park hack and going a good deal into society. I had been given introductions to people moving in equally good though widely different circles, and I enjoyed the round that was always open to me with the zest of a fellow who had hitherto known nothing brighter socially, than the dinners and dull evenings of his parents' contemporaries in a conventionally exhausted place. There was not the slightest element of danger to the most susceptible Yahoo in the family into which I was admitted. The only daughter was too old and too plain, and too good, let me justly, to mate love to a boy. And my mother's subtle inquiries had elicit* d the fact that this only daughter did nc t Infest the house with any dangerous voung frijnds of her ssx. 'We have had young men living with us for the last ten years, and I have never heard of a single romantic incident connected with any one of them,' Mrs Pratt laughed, when my mother's meaning dawned upon her. ' Your son will have comfortable rooms and capital dinners with us ; that will be all. For anything like flirtation, or folly of that kind, he must go out.'

' But I don't want him to go out to indulge in flirtation and folly,' my mother persisted. 'Then he won't have it here, my dear madam ; for you'll give him credit for having sufficient taste to abstain from falling in love with either my mother or me, won't you ?' the jolly, ugly, sensible woman said, good temperedlv. And my mother took Miss Prait's word for it that ni harm should befall me under their roof, and, with her fears allayed, departed. Six months passed, and I am bound to say that during the whole of that time 1 never saw anything that was even moderately attractive in the form of a woman inside the hospital portals where I sojourned. Probably Miss Pratt's friends were chosen for their sterling worth, for they had nothing external to recommend them. They were as a rule, middle aged ; those who were still young were prematurely anxious and careworn. As a rule, too, they led earnest, hard working lives, being engaged in battling, most of them for their modicum of daily bread in the ranks of governesses and music teachers. I liked some of them very much; I respected them all heartily ; but I did not feel a particle of the tender passion toward one of them for a moment. Miss Prrtt did not keep the word of promise to the ear and break it to the sense. My mother had reason to be pleased with her ; but I looked upon it as almost an injustice that she should never have introduced any one sufficiently attractive to me, to give me either a moment's pleasure or (its sure successor) a moment's pain. One night a letter was handed to her at dinner which she regarded coolly for an instant, then put it into her pocket, saying : ' It's from Constance Terris, mamma; it will do to read in the evening,' and resumed her occupation of carving. • Constance Terris, la ! Why what did I hear of her last ?' aid Mrs Pratt, ruminated.

' That she was gone to Australia to give readings,' Mr a Pratt replied curtly. 'And is that letter from Australia, my dear ?' Mrs Pratt continued, gazing at the pocket into which her daughter had thrust the letter through her eye-glass. 1 Probably not; it has a penny stamp on it,' Misa Pratt rejoined. ' But we'll see presently,' and so the subject was dismissed.

I happened to be at home that evening, and in the course of it I heard some detached portions of Mrs Terra's letter. She was desirous of remaining in Lonaon for a while in order to see if she could turn her talents ta> account in the metropolis, and she wanted the Pratts to take herself and her little girl Elinor in. Could they do it ? ' She was always very fatiguing to me as a young woman,' Mrs Pratt said, shaking her head. ' She had such an unceasing flow of spirits, Mr Mordaunt. It was very beauti ful, but very tiresome.' ' I don't think it was beautiful at all; it was simply boisterous,' Miss Pratt averred ; 'but I should think she was quite down now; she's had enough to tame her, and she's forty if she's a day. We had better have her here, and if we don't like her we can get rid of her.' 'Yes, that's easily done,' I put in, for my faith at that time in its being easy to get rid of any woman, when yon didn't want her any longer, was large; I did not yet know Mrs Terris.

I forgot this little incident almost immediately after it occurred, and so felt rather surprised when, on running down to dinner a few evenings after, I found two strange ladies preparing to take their places at the table. The elder of the two was —But room for Mrs Terris. She demands a fresh paragraph. She was one of the whitest women, without being insipid, and being like unto unbaked bread that I ever beheld. Her skin was magnificent. In spite of those forty years with which her friend Miss Pratt accredited her, the texture of her skin was as fine and delicately tinted as that of an infant. She had light, fluffy hair, fashionably dressed in a way that would have been trying to ordinary women, but that was extraordinarily becoming to her. She had small expressive scintillating, grayish-blue eyes that did not seem to belong to such a gorgeously large and fine physique as hers. The eyes were not merely observant, they were conspicuously watchful. They wandered from yours as she addressed you and took passing notes as to what feeling there was flickering through other people's minds on to their fates. They looked vague and strayed when she was speaking in the most and heartfelt manner apf a-ently. Yet she was the frankest woman I had ever met. I'. was impossible to account for this, that so strongly resembled deceitfulness, in her expression. Her frankness was a staggering thing to my inexperience Before I had been two hours in her society she had informed me rather fully of a good many of the late Captain Terriss's follies in general, and faults towards herself in particular. She had taught me to understand that the talents she possessed as reader, vocalist, and histrionic were respectively of the very highest order, and that under auspicious circumstances of cultivation and appreciation, she would have been a second George Sand, Adelaide Kemble, Grisi, and Bistori. She had informed me that • Swedenborg was an extremely clever man, the only leader of thought that was worth following, the guide of the " coming race," and the solitary instance in literature of complete congeniality of sentiment with, herself.' She further added ' that Christianity was played out, that its bonds were only intended to rule in those inferior minds that were incapable of understanding the more subtle mysteries of the German philosophy, and that she expected her little girl to be a triumphant refutation of the theory that religious Jculture and careful guardianship were requisite for the production of a good woman.' If my hair had not been cut in the orthodox military crop, it would have stood on end as I listened to those elementary views. Presently I glanced -with pitying curiosity at the ' little girl,' the daughter of such ;> mother—the latter had completely absorbed me hitherto—and, to my surprise I saw a fine, usual looking, nice-faced girl of about tweuty. ' The combination of George Sand, Adelaide Kemble, Grisi, and Ristori has turned out an extremely nice, average girl for a daughter,' I thought, as I watched the young lady : and I felt disposed to go over and join the group who were listening to the girl's quiet description of their life in Aus tralia.

' She's a very entertaing child,' her mother said following the direction of my eyes. ' Most girls of her age are gauche as soon as they find themselves the only speakers in a

room full of listeners; but Elinor avoids that pitfall, as you have already perceived. I suppose she has learned the art of conversation from me, for she's been my constant companion ever since I began to think for myself.'

T suppose I looked incredulous, or apalled, or amazed, or something else that I ought not to have looked, for she resumed with a running accompaniment of laughter : ' My dear sir, I suppose you fancy that I am hoistorically inaccurate in making the dates of my beginning; to think and of her becoming my companion contemporaneous ? Not all all; I only began to think after I had married and found out that I had made a mistske in doing so ; then, luckily for me, I had Elinor, and made her my companion.

' And a very charming one you found her, I'm sure,' I said, feebly. Not that I did not thoroughly mean what I was saying, but that I felt convinced that the lady whom I addressed fancied, that all the charms of the companionship had been on her side. ' Yes,' she said, affably, ' Elinor is what I have made her ; if mothers ';are such fools hat they can't mould their daughters after their own pattern, they deserve to hare their burden of stupid, unmarriageable daughters laid upon them. Not that I want Elinor to marry, now or ever. I'd infinitely prefer keeping her to myself to giving her to a second edition of her father, for example ; besides, she's much too clever a girl ever to marry a man who wou d insist on being her master, and she's much too clever a girl to be satis ded with a nonentity, and it isn't easy to find the happy medium,'

' Have you never found it ?' I asked encouragingly ; for, if Mrs Terris felt herself justified in talking in this strain, I, as a young man, felt myself to be perfectly justified iu leadiDg her on to continue it 'Yes, once, when it was too late,' she said, with an affected half checked sigh, and a singular untrue and bright smile ' once, when it was too late !' ' If Elinor is what her mother lias made her, Elinor must be about the last girl in England that I'd like for my wife,' I thought, as I got away from the vivacious matron's side at last, and foregoing my original intention of seeking Elinor, went off to my club to give my friends a description of the entertainment Mrs Terris had been giviug for my sole benefit. She favored me with another side view of her character in the course of a day or two, and succeeded in doing away with my first impression of her in a singularly expressive way for a time. Opportunities not offering themselves for the public display of her talents, she spent many of her evenings at home with the Pratts and his little girl, who nsed occasionally to listen to her mama's narrations with an expression of admiring, affectionate incredulity that would have led me to suppose that Mrs Terris was a romancist in private life, had I not at the time been firmly i mbued with the belief that she was, in the parlance of my colleagues and myself, the frankest woman out. Dnring these long evenings Mrs Terris and I fell into the. habit of interchanging thought and sentiment and experience to a considerable extent, that is to say, I imagined an interchange was going on; but I have become conscious since that the obligation was a one sided one, and that I was simply the receptae'e for the loose thoughts for which my brilliant and versat le new friend desired to find a storehouse. I fancy that the mere fact of having worded a view made her remember that she had once held it. Accordingly she worded a vast number of uncommonly staggering ones, and I fell metaphorically at her feet and worshipped bar, and wished that Heaven had made me s ich a woman, and that I was old enough and valiant enough to try to win her.

' I long for retirement, for rest, in which to carry out some of the ideas with which my brain is teeming, Mr Mordaunt,' she would say to me, with an expression of ineffable weariness that was really creditable (from the artistic point of view) to a woman who wasn't weary of anything iu the slightest degree. ' You probably (mistake me to the degree of thinking that I find pleasure in this vortex, balm in the fulsome flattery that is offered to me ; satisfaction in knowing that lam envied, and therefoie hated, by other women, who invariably find themselves neglected when lam by. But, in this you misjudge me—l assure you that you do.' As I had never seen her in the vortex, nor heard the fulsome flattery, nor detected the dark vein of hatred which ran through thffi jealous minds of other women concerning her, I could conscientiously aver that I had never for a moment suspected her of rinding pleasure in any one of them. But this disavowal didn't satisfy her a bit.

' Ah, yes, you "say so ; but I know too well what you think and what all people who are merely superficially acquainted with me think,' she said, with a sad smile and an incredulous shake of the bead. ' Because it has been my duty to my child to struggle in public for the means of supporting her, people are cruel enough to suppose that I like the notoriety and adulation that falls to my lot, whereas in reality lam weary of them. All I want is quiet, and to see my Elinor happy.' ' She's a charming girl, and is sure to marry well,' I said encouragingly. It was the only form of consolation I had to offer, but I felt that it was perfectly commonplace in the case of such a superior woman. ' Marry !' she repeated with supurb contempt. 'Do you think that I look forward to her fulfilling a destiny that might iu any degree resemble mine ? No, no, Mr Mordaunt; dismiss that notiou from your mind at once. My child can support herself already. I gave her a magnificent musical education, and she turns her knowledge and proficieucy to account. I have brought her up to be quite independent of marriage as a means of living. She, like, rne, is justified in her little extravagancies you see ; she pays for them herself.' ' Poor girl!' I said compassionately, ' it's rather rough on her that she should go through the drudgery of teaching music' (To bft continued.';