LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 945, 5 July 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

ALIVE OR DEAD?

By Mrs Altcxander Fraser. Part I. It was a very hot day; hot to oppressiveness. The sky was one blaze of yellow sunshine ; there was not a breath of air, not a rustle in a leaf, not a sound save the monotonous hum of the bees ransacking the blossoms. A dead stillness reigned without the manor of Brocklehurst, although within there were both noise and excitement, for the morrow was the wedding day of Hester Kyrle, millionaire, and the heiress of the Brocklehurst estates. But there were two rooms within the house that noise and excitement did not reach. They were apparently sacred from intrusion ; and even the mother of the bride elect did not venture to invade their precincts. One of them was the study of John Kyrle, and the other was the chamber of his daughter. Mr Kyrle sat in his study in a deep reverie. He was a tall lean man, with hawk-like eyes, that rested with a curious intensity on the empty grate, while a huge pile of letters, pushed carelessly into a heap, lay unheeded by his side.

He was exclusively that which is understood by a man of the world, thoroughly mundane to the backbone. He slept and he ate and drank under the connubial roof, and with a stereotyped icy smile paid the household bills without a question or a comment ever crossing his thin lips. But as far as any of the ordinary feeling or influence that the magical word "home"' is supposed to exercise over man, he might have been celibate. A very long time ago he had discovered that his marriage had been a fatal mistake. Both he and his wife were of the world, living for the world ; but with this one fact the bond of sympathy ceased between them entirely.

John Kyrle was cynical, clever, and desperately ambitious. Mrs Kyrle was foolish, frivolous, and dreadfully underbred.

At the present time there was as little unison of sentiment as usual between the ill-matched pair, for Mr Kyrle's sharp-cut physiognomy bore upon it a marked contrast to the complacent round face of his better half. In lieu of a beatific smile of content, such as she wore on the eve of her daughter's marriage with Mervyn Tyrrell—a man after her own heart—Mr Kyrle's lips were tightly compressed, while an ominous shadow bestrided his light-gray eyes and his high brow. There had been an appeal made to him on the preceding night, au appeal most passionate and most eloquent, with that powerful eloquence that truth ; and feeling can give even to the most trivial words, while the voice that uttered it was the one that was dearest to his ears.

He had faithfully pledged himself to consider the subject, forced on his attention by the plaintive sobbing tones, and he had passed several hours shut up in his study to carry out the promise he had made. But for once his keen intellect seemed entirely at fault; the difficulty he desired to solve remained still unsolved, and he was sorely perplexed. A timid knock aroused him ; he hesitated an instant before bidding the visitor enter, and he felt almost like a culprit and a craven when at last a light footfall crossed the floor and paused close to his side. Then he mustered courage and turned to look up with a sternness that was feigned in his glance, and a resolution that was mock on his mouth.

The girl who stood beside him was slender, almost fragile, in appearance, wanting slightly in physique, perhaps, but yet wil lowy and graceful in figure, and with a face fair as the morning. Her clear cheeks reddened and paled alternately, and her soft lips quivered like a child's, while her eyes, meek blue eyes, were fixed eagerly on his own.

Before he could address her, she was down in a white heap on the floor, with her clasped hands resting on his knee. ' You will not make me marry him, father: you will have mercy upon me, and send him away.' The wailing cry reached even the heart that had grown somewhat hard and insensible by contact with the world. 'Hester, listen to me;' and Mr Kyrle leant forward and took her trembliug fingers into his own firm grasp. ' You are going to be cruel, father,' she gasped, with her colour all flown and her face showing up an ashy white. ' Do not excite yourself like this,' he said quietly, still holding her hands; but she dragged them away hastily, and began wringing them in her excessive agitation. ' Tell me, will you or will you not save me from worse than death ?' she asked, with passion in her voice. ' 1 will tell you nothing, Hester, until you choose to be calm.'

She drew herself together, as it w with a visible shiver passing over her whole frame.

' I am calm now,' she said, in accents that were comparative!y steady. ' If you had told me a month—nay, even a week—ago that in pledging yourself to marry Mervyn Tyrrell you were acting under coercion, I could have and should have stopped the matter at once. To me it seems a most iniquitous marriage when a woman swears to love her husband, and deliberately perjures herself. But I understood that you accepted him voluntarily, aiid that his attentions were agreeable to you.' ' I was a miserable coward, father, as I told you last night. He and I were thrown so much together, that it seemed impossible for me to refuse when he almost demanded me to marry him. And then my mother said that my refusal would break her heart.'

' Her heart!' broke in John Kyrle, with an ill-suppressed cynicism in his voice. ' And I have tried, tried hard to reconcile myself; but the more I see of him, the more I dislike, nay, hate him. I shall go mad if I have to marry that man !' ' And what can be done to prevent it at the eleventh hour -- on the very eve of the bridal ? Hester, I have thought over it, as I promised you, and iiud it must be. I can do nothing.' ' Nothing !' she almost shrieked, rising from her knees, and her slight figure sway • ins-

Mr Kyrle caught her in his arms, and with one hand turned up her face towards him so that he might scrutinise it. ' Child, do you love some other man ?' he questioned gravely, with a keen glance. But her eyes looked back at him with frank' ueaa in their limpid depths.

• I wish I did !' she replied earnestly; ' for I would appeal to him to save me from this fate, since you refuse to do so. No ; it is only that I hate—loathe —this Mervyn Tyrrell !' * But why ? He is not one I should have picked out for your husband ; but he is well-looking, and I siippose true and honest in the love he professes for you.' ' What matters if he be true and honest, or if he loves me or not, since I abhor him with my whole heart and soul 1 Father'— and she elapsed his arm with both her hands and gazed piteously at him—'do you really mean that there is no escape for me—that I must become his wife ?'

' Hester, a child of mine must not be called a jilt and dishonorable by the world, and it would be dishonor on your part to draw back now,' Mr Kyrle answered pompously, in a hard voice. 1 Then God help me, since you won't ! Oh, that I might die before to-morrow !' she murmured, with a heartfelt pathos. ' Hester!'

For once the 'father' shone out of the steely gray eyes, and a misty look came over them. The sight touched her at once.

' Forgive me for worrying you,' she pleaded. ' I suppose you are right, and that everything should be sacrificed to honor. I will try and resign myself;' and she turned quietly to go away. Mr Kyrle stooped and pressed a kiss on her forehead. He was not a demonstrative man, and the caress was so rare that the girl looked up at him wistfully Jand in astonishment.

' My poor child !' he faltered. ' Are you sorry for me, father ? It is at any rate a comfort to know that you pity me, if you cannot help me,' she said, with a faint effort at a smile that ended in a sob.

When she was gone John Kyrle went back to his chair, and bent over an open book; but the muscles round his mouth twitched nervously, and he brushed away with a shaky hand a drop that glittered on the page before him.

Part 11,

* Hester, you are late,' Mrs Kyrle remarked, in a petulant voice, as she swept into her daughter's room on the morning of the wedding. ' Hester' did not seem to be conscious if she was late. She leant listlessly against the casement in a loose white wrapper ; her long golden hair was unbound, and her face was very pale and wan. But it was her eyes that were strange; they wore a scared look, and deep lustre shades underlined them.

'Am I V was all she answered, without moving from her position, and the tone of her voice struck painfully on her mother's ear.

Mrs Kyrle—foolish, frivolous, and underbred Mrs Kyrle—had plumed herself on having achieved a stroke of diplomacy; and the serious tone of her daughter's voice depressed her exultation to an unpleasant degree. She had manoeuvred and managed with that wonderful skill that especially belongs to cunning and unscrupulous feminine nature to force Hester into a marriage to which her inclinations were violently opposed. And she felicitated herself immensely on the success of her scheme. Yet there were sparks of maternal feeling lying at the bottom of her heart, although they were incrusted in a mass of worldliness and selfishness. The suffering that had been legibly written on Hester's face during the latter clays had brought a few qualms to her conscience now and th n, and not all the specious arguments that egotism finds to justify itselt to its worshippers could quite smother the reproach of the still small voice that would asser itself.

' I am acting for her good, and she will thank me for it hereafter,' was the stereotyped phrase by which she sought to salve the whispers of conscience. (To be continued.)