LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 914, 30 May 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

CAUGHT IN THE REBOUND,

By Annie Thomas.

{Concluded. )

The truth is, it was a considerable let down to me to hear that the devoted mother, who had been flaunting the sacrilices that she was in the habit of making for her child, should allow that child to take the responsibility of her own maintenance on herself at such an early age. For the first time it struck me as a hard and incongruous fact that the girl should always be dressed in the plainest and poorest materials, while the mother was invariably dressed in garments of price. It must be conceded to her that she was justified in her course as far as the result went. Mrs Terris, seen by the early morning light untouched, and in the simple garb ycleped a dressing gown, was not altogether so pleasant an object as was the dainty dame who swept down to dinner in sheen silk, or even the grander lady who rolled off in a comfortable little brougham two or three times, in black velvet and pearls, to read and recite to a select company. But the glamor was on me to such a degree that I looked on the haggard, hard-faced woman who breakfasted with us as an unreality, and took for truth the delicately complexioned, beaming, brilliant dame who showed herself to us at night. Gradually a shadow fell, so softly at first that it was scarcely perceptible, and yet I think now that I was dimly conscious of it from the beginning. Something like a coolness began to be observable between Mrs Terris and her friends the Pratts. The old lady was an amiable nonentity, and her misapprehension (it cannot be called by a harsher name) showed itself chiefly in timorous silence in Mrs Term's presence. But Miss Pratt became unmistakably cold and caustic.

‘ When you’ve quite done your work here, Constance, I presume you’ll go away,’ Miss Pratt broke out, bluntly, one night, in the midst of a fascinating lecture Mrs Terris was giving me on my folly in wasting all my evenings at home with her. ‘ When I have quite finished my work ! Ah, when will that be ?’ Mrs Terris responded, with a gentle sigh. * Not while there’s a fool left in the world, and he chances to come your way,’ Miss Pratt rop’ied gruffly. ‘ And while the world exists, fools will exist in it, my dear Sarah,’ Mrs Terris said, with admirable command of temper. She took her revenge out afterward by telling me that Miss Pratt was a‘spiteful, malignant, mendacious old maid, who had hurled herself at the head of every man she had ever met in her life, and who bullied her mother in private till the poor lady hardly dared say her soul was her own. ’ Put I was still sufficiently in possession of my senses to know that this statement was a mistake. Miss Pratt might be ugly, but she was neither unwomanly, cruel or vain. ‘ I never saw the axiom, “ One fool makes many,” so perfectly carried out before,’ Mrs Pratt went on, severely. And Mrs Terris looked at me and laughed, taking me into the joke against Mrs Pratt’s acrimoniousness, in a way that was very wonderful and witching to me at the time. It must not be supposed that I was devoid of all other lady friends during the Terris epoch. Their name had been legion umil she came, and of some of them I retain a grateful recollection to this day, though her keen eyes and acute judgment detected many a Haw in most of them. In a lit of enthusiastic admiration for her once, I called most of these friends together and feasted them under the Pratt roof, and by some special divination some astute power of reading whatever she desired to read—she discovered that they were all opposed to and intriguing against her. I thought her very magnanimous ; for though she refused to believe me when I told her that not one of them had hazarded a word against her, she made a free and ample display of her great talents for their amusement, while I ambled about the room and tried to be meek under the exalted feeling that I was the means of their benefitting by

the condensed essence of the talents of George Sand, Adelaide Kemble, Grisi and llistori. 1 tried to remember that she was but human, and though of great parts, that these parts might crumble away at the first contact with cold or catarrh. Alas ! it never occurred to me to think that she might crumble away from me, as it were, leaving mo to perish under the ruins of that temple of appreciation and flattery in which I had enshrined her, and into which I called all those I knew to come and worship.

‘ All your friends detest me,’ she took the opportunity of whispering to me several times during the evening ; ‘ but it’s jealousy, my dear Cecil, nothing but jealouay, and I’m sure Ido nothing to create it. I simply am what nature made ; and 1 ask you, do I do anything to detract from them, or to distract attention from them ? The great majority are fools, my dear boy, but they’re not fools enough not to see that a woman to whom the powers above have vouchsafed brains takes the pas of them in all their pretty well gilt folly. I can’t congratulate you on your galaxy of beauty. Our estimable Sarah can hold her own with the best of them See how they hate me because you’re lingering by me ! Go and do your duty, Cecil. You are the host, you know ; go aud cajole those wearisome women with a few compliments suited to their shallow understandings Tes, they are shallow, Cecil; you know they are, only you are not frank as I am, and so you dare not say it. ’ ‘Two or three of them are dear, good women,’ I said humbly ; aud I mentioned two or three who had been very good to me, and for no ulterior object, I can swear.’

‘ Dear, good women,’ my charmer laughed. ‘ So was your grandmother’s washerwoman a dear, good woman, I’ve no doubt Is that any reason why they should let their illnature and ill-breeding get the better of them to the extent of shewing me, as they do plainly, that they abhor me because every man in the room wants to talk to me ? I don’t care for attention, do I, Elinor ?’

‘.No, mamma, notail,’ the obedient girl answered with au obedient but peculiar smile

‘ But I am not going to be sycophant enough to evade it for the sake of pleasing a number of spiteful old women, who want to damage me because I am noc so disagreeable as themselves.’

1 1 don’t think they want to damage you, and I’m sure they’re not disagreeable,” I said, striking a feeble blow for the poor traduced friends, who were really innocent of all offence against the queen of my soul. But I failed in organizing a harmonious meeting ; for though Mrs Terris was liberal in giving herself to the good cause of amusing my guests to the best of her ability, she was not satisfied with the meed of applause they gave her, and so condemned them wholesale, in not too subdued a tone, for being bound in the meshes of hopeless mediocrity. Half at least of my lady friends went away offended at her, and she in turn was offended with all my mean friends for not having joined her in deriding everybody else.

The next morning Miss Pratt took occasion to remark that she hoped e I was not going to make a fool of myself. ” I did not deign to answer her, bat in the afternoon I proposed to Mrs Terris. It was very romantic. She didn’t quite accept me nor did she by any means refuse me. She told me that I was a foolish boy, and that a great deal of unnecessary fnss was made about eugagemenls. * Love ’ she said, ‘ to be happy, must be free ; directly he was bound he became either odious or ridiculous.’ To my own surprise I agreed with her; nevertheless, I wrote to my mother and father for their consent to my marriage with Constance Terris. They answered me by appearing in person. I shall not forgot the scene very soon. They an ived unexpectedly while we were in the middle of the afternoon tea in the room which Mrs Terris had confiscated for her own use, and fitted up as her special shrine. She had a fine tasto, and contrived to get great effects out of very inadequate material. The aspect of the little apartment in which she was tending temporarily, preparatory to settling in splendor wherever it might suit her to settle, was very attractive. It really was a very pretty little scene, and as it was the last in which I trod the boards as Mrs Term's lover, I may be forgiven for reproducing it. There were only four of us present. JMrs Terris herself, superb in a peacock blue Watteau gown dispensed the graceful hospitalities of the ebonized tea table and Oriental china. What admirable tea she made ! How strong it was, and how hot ! How firm and white her hands looked as they played about among the rich, deep green dragons and corals of that wonderful old Japanese service. How proud I was of her, and at the same time how diffident I felt about my own poor merits when weighed in the balance against those of such a magnificent woman ! As for poor Miss Pratt, she looked much as usual, I suppose, for I can’t remember a single detail of her toilet or appearance. But Elinor w-as exquisite in an ivory white serge that wrapped itself about her form in the simplest and most artistic folds. I felc a throb of pride in my future step daughter as I -watched her graceful, composed bearing on this trying afternoon.

Presently into our midst my father and mother burst, full of good feeling for everybody concerned, but at the same time a little anxious, naturally, to see the bride whom I—the representative of the house of Mordaunt —had chosen. They both greeted me kindly and gravely, and then my mother with a line Hush on her sweet good face, turned to Elinor and said :

‘So you’re going to be my son’s wife, my dear? I don’t think I could have chosen better for him myself.’ ‘ I don’t think you could,’ Mrs Terris exclaimed, with that admirable tact of hers, which is never railing, and which—to cut a long story short—makes her the most agreeable of mothers-iu law.

For of course Elinor and I married, and that little preliminary canter I took with her mother is never refer, cd to, save as a sort of providental mistake which was made the furtherance of the great scheme of our lives. I hourly bless Mrs Terris for being my mother in law, in which capacity she is amusing, helpful, and valuable, and doubly bless her for not being my wife.