LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 946, 6 July 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

ALIVE OR DEAD ?

By Mrs Alexnder Fraser.

( Concluded .) ‘ Turn, Hester, and let me see if you are looking your best, as you are in duty-bound to do to-clav.’

There was no answer. The girl did not heed or even appear to hear the words, but stood gazing vacantly into the blue sky, where some feathery clouds were floating slowly by. ‘lt is time that you were dressing,’ Mrs Kyrle went on, in accents that had grown sharper through Hester’s silence. ‘Yes,’ answered the voice ; but the figure never stirred.

* Leave her to me, Mrs Kyrle and a girl in bridesmaid’s gear came forward from the other end of the room. ‘ Trust to mo that Hester shall bo ready by the time the clock strikes eleven.’

‘ Thank you, Maude. I will leave you to your task ; and it seems to me that you will find it a difficult one ; and Mrs Kyrle rustled angrily out of the room. ‘Hester, you must dress!’ and Maude Wymer threw her arm round the girl and tried to draw her round.

‘Very well;’ and this time the figure

did move. Hester walked firmly across the room, and delivered herself passively into the maid’s and Maude’s hands ; and in a little while she stood arrayed in her satin dress, with a coronet of orange flowers crowning her brow. ‘Yon look lovely, Hester; just a shade too white perhaps, but beautiful as a dream, does she not Anne V cried Maude enthusiastically? ‘ Miss Kyrle looks lovely, but she is a great deal too white; she looks just like a bride of death.’

* Oh, hush, Anne! Hester you had better sit here until it is time to go down. ‘ 1 should like to go to the window,’ was the quiet answer. 4 Please raise it, Maude ; I feel stifled.’

4 It is a delicious dajr : the air is so full of fragrance, and the sun shines so bright. It is a happy bride that the sun shines on, you know,’ Maude said, pushing the sash up ; then she drew forward an armchair, into which Hester sank.

4 You are crushing your dress ! And if you lean back like that, you will spoil your flowers and veil,’

The bride-elect looked up at the remonstrance. and gave a little wistful smile. 4 You can put me to rights to-morrow, Maude; lam so tired to-day!’ and she wearily closed her eyes. Maude Wymer gazed at her in dismay and surprise. Then she went and sat down a little way off. A thousand trifles, light as air at the time, seemed to her now as con firmation strong of doubts regarding this marriage that had occasionally arisen in her mind. She was an intelligent girl, and in a few minutes she realised Hesters pitiable position. Hester was going mad at her fate was the thought that flashed through her mine as she watched her sitting or sleeping so strangely there. Suddenly a throng of girls appeared at the door. They were Maude’s sister-bridesmaids; and after ex changing a word with her, they walked towards the window.

‘ Hester is asleep !’ whispered one of them in astonishment, and the others moved softly and spoke in the hushed tones as they gathened round the chair. ‘ How dreadfully white she looks !’ * She will have more color when she wakes perhaps. Then a sort of curious awe, almost a dread, crept over them, and they were silent. Hester was so still. There was not the slightest flicker of a golden lash ; white and rigid as a marble image, with her pale hands folded loosely and meekly together, Hester Kyrle sat before them. At this moment the maid approached the panic-struck group. Surprised at the startled expression of the different faces, she pressed hurriedly forward; and as if with an instinct of what was to come, she seized one of the hands; the touch of it was sufficient. The woman fell on her knees before the motionless figure that was clad in all the mockery of bridal array, and she pave a piercing shriek that rang through the house, and fell on the ears of the marriage guests—a shriek which in the contagious panic of horror was taken up by each of the assembled bridesmaids.

The clock chimed eleven loud strokes, but Mervyn Tyrrell waited in vain for his bride to come to him. Then John Kyrle stood and gazed at his daughter, and he knew that the Heaven she had invoked to save her from Mervyn Tyrrell’s arms had listened to her prayers; for Hester Kyrle was dead. Part 111. All the sunshine had gone from the earth, and the sky was of sombre gray with gatherclouds, on the day that Hester Kyrle was to be carried to her last resting-place. Mrs Kyrle’s grief was so violent that her reason seemed likely to give way ; remorse added to sorrow was making her burden too heavy to bear ; and the cold worldly woman gave way to bursts of passionate despair that evoked surprise in its hearers. ‘ But it is no wonder that Mrs Kyrle suffers remorse,’ Maude Wymer said to her brother, as he took her to the house for a last look at the friend of her childhood, before the sweet face should be_ shut away from mortal eyes. * Mrs Kyrle is as much a murderess as though she had cut Hester’s throat with a knife ! ’ Then she recounted to him all her ideas on the subject of the marriage, the prospect of which had killed Hester.

‘O Mark, if you had seen the angel’s smile, so sad, so wistful, aud so meek, that she gave a few minutes before she died.’ She paused, her voice choked by tears. ‘ And she died of aneurism of the heart ?’ questioned Mark Wymer. He was a medical student, and so sudden a death excited his interest.

‘Of course it was; the doctor said so. At first they tried restoratives, fancying it was a lit of some sort; but I knew better. I knew the instant I looked at her that Hester was dead ; I knew that she had reached peace. She was just as cold and as rigid a few moments after she died as she is now. I should like you to see her, Mark; she was so beautiful in life.’ ‘And she is beautiful in death,’ was Mark’s first thought as his eyes rested on the de ad girl, who, to gratify _ the half crazy mother’s wish, was habited in her weddinggarb. Mark had been studying medicine in the London hospitals, and, like too many in in his profession, he had come to regard the human body practically _ and simply as a cuwou'i piece of mechanism animated by vital principle. But he could not somehow look at the form before him in the same cold abstract manner. He could only gaze on it as a vision of beauty such as he had never looked on before. There was not the faintest shade of death’s livid hue on the pure white face There was neither sharpening nor sinking of the classical features. There was n ne of that peculiar expression round the pretty lips, and in the fall of the eyelids upon the cheek, which is the signet that the conqueror Death sets upon h's victims; and yet it did not look like life cither. In the face and hands there was a marble rigidness, and the tints were transparent like parian. Hester Ivyrle was borne to her grave, and Mark Wymcr returned home; but when the day had gone by and dusk was gathering in, he wended his way to a friend’s house, and that friend was a surgeon of high standing in his profession. ‘ Barker, do you know a sane man when you see him ?’ he asked. The surgeon opened his eyes in surprise, •Just put your finger on my pulse and look at me. Am I all right ?’ ‘ I should think you are gone mad.’ ‘ I have come on an errand which I fear you will think insane ; and I want you to assure yourself that I am compos mentis before I speak it.’

‘ Well, say that I am convinced of your sanitv V

4 There was a young girl buried to-day, and I believe she has been buried alive I have come to beg of you to help me discover the true case.’ ‘ What?’ ‘ Mark reiterated his words. Enough that his persuasions prevailed. The sextan was heavily bribed, and they then descended into the vault. When the coffin was unclosed, Hester lay in it with no change in her appearance. The surgeon touched the brow and the hands, then he held a small pocket-mirror before her mouth. The glass was undimined. He shook his head; the case was hopeless. ‘ One moment,’ cried Mark. ‘ Put your hand under the arm, and see if there is the same chill there as on the brow.’ With difficulty the direction was carried out—the same chilline j s was not there ; to decide the point the silken bodice was cut away in order to feel the heart. There was no pulsation. 1 'I ry under the arm again,’ pleaded Mark earnestly. The surgeon purshed his hand slowly along ; then he paused and visibly started, exclaiming eagerly, ‘ There is warmth here ! By heavens, she is nor, dead !’

4 Isow seejhere,’ said Mark. He lifted her right hand, straightening the elbow, and pointing the fingers in the opposite direction. After which he withdrew his hold of the arm, and it remained precisely in the same position. ‘ Hurrah, Mark ! It is nothing after all but a cataleptic fit. Let us rake tier home at once.’

Hester Kyrle recovered consciousness after a great deal of suffering; but the utmost skill and devotion were requisite to cure her. When at last her cheek bloomed again with the roses of health, aud strength came to her frame, she gave her life right willingly int r ' the keeping of its preserver; and Mark Wymer won his wife from the very jaws of Death.

Why Poison the Sick with the liquors of commerce when a pure stimulant containing vegetable agents, which endow it with extraordinary alterative and strengthening properties, which never excites and invariably affords relief, is just as easily procured. If the patient is weak or nervous, his kidneys, stomach, or bowels out of order, let him have recourse to that safest, surest, and pleasantest of regulating tonics, IT dolpho Wolfe’s Schiedam Aeomatic Schnapps.— [Advt.]