LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 1051, 9 November 1877, Page 3

LITERATURE.

A DAY IN BRIAR WOOD. ( Continued .) ‘ What’s the matter V ‘ Do you know my husband, sir V she asked. ‘ It’s more than likely that you do.’ ‘ And what if I do ?’ cried Whitney. The woman took the words to be an affirmative answer. She drew near, and laid her small brown huger on his coat sleeve. ‘ Then, if you chance to meet him, sir, persuade him to come back to me for the love of heaven. I can read the futnre : and for some days past, since w« first halted here, I have foreseen that evil is in store for him, He won’t believe me; he is not one of us ; but 1 scent it in the air, and it comes nearer and nearer ; it is drawing very close now. He may listen to you, sir, for v a respect Sir John, who is never hard on us as some are ; and oh, send him back here to me and the child ! Better that it should fall on him when by our side than away from us ’ ‘ Why —what do you mean ?’ cried Whitney, surprised out of the question, and hardly understanding her words or their purport. Aadb® Jiav© laughed out*

right, as he told me later, but for the dreadful trouble that shone forth from her sad wild eyes. ‘ I don’t know what I mean : it’s hidden from me,’ she answered, taking the words in a somewhat different light from what he meant them. ‘ 1 think it may be sudden sickness ; or it may be evil trouble ; ■whatever it is, it will end badly.’ Whitney nodded to her, and we pursued our way. I had been looking at the little girl, who had drawn shyly up to gaze at us. > he was fair as a lily, with a sweet face and bine eyes as the sky. * What humbugs they are!’ exclaimed Whitney, alluding to gipsies and tramps in general. ‘As to this one, I should say she’s going off her head !’ ‘ Do you know her husband V’ ‘ Don’t know him from Adam. Johnny, 1 hope that’s not a stolen child. Fair as she is, she can’t be the woman’s : there’s nothing of the gipsy in her composition.’ ‘ How well the gipsy speaks I With quite a refined accent. ’ ‘ Gipsies often do. I’ve heard, Let us get on.’ What with this adventure, and dawdling, and taking a wrong turn or two, it was past one o’clock when we got in, and they were laying the cloth for dinner. The green mo»sy glade, with the sheltering trees around, the banks and the dells, the ferns and wild flowers, made a picture of a retreat on a broiling day. The table (some boards, brought from the Hall, and laid on trestles) stood in the middle of the grass ; and Helen and Anna Whitney, in their green and white muslins, were Just as busy as bees placing the dishes upon it. Lady Whitney (with a face redder than beetroot) helped them : she liked to be always doing something. Miss Cattledon and the Mater were pacing the dell below, and Miss Deveen sat talking with the Squire and Sir John 4 Have they not got here V exclaimed William.

‘ Have who not got here!’ retorted Helen.

‘Todhetley and the boys. * Ages ago. They surmised that you two must be lost, stolen, or strayed.’ * Then where are they V ’ ‘Making themselves useful. Johnny Ludlow, 1 wish you’d go after them, and tell them of all things to bring a corkscrew. Nobody can find ours, and we think it is left behind.’

‘ Why, here’s the corkscrew, in my pocket,’ called out Sir John. ‘Whatever brings it there? And What’s that great thing, moving down to us ? ’ It was Tod with a wooden stool upon his head, legs upwards. Eednal the gamekeeper lived close by, and it was arranged that we should borrow chairs, and things, from his cottage. We sat down to dinner at last—and a downright jolly dinner it was. Plenty of good tninga to eat, cider, lemonade, and champagne to drink : and everybody talking together, and bursts of laughter. 4 Look at (. attledon !’ cried Bill in my ear. 4 She is as merry as the rest of ns. ’

So she was. A whole sea of smiles on her thin face. She wore a grey gown as genteel as herself, bands of black velvet round her pinched-in waist and long throat. Cattledon looked like vinegar in general, it’s true ; bat I don’t say she was bad at heart. Even she could be genial to-day, and the rest of us were off our head with jollity, the Squire’s face and bir John’s beaming back at one another. If we had but foreseen how pitifully the day was to end ! It makes me think of some verses 1 once learnt out of a journal— 44 Chambers’s,” 1 believe. The magazine goes on to me about 44 limited space,” but I’ll put them in here. It can but strike them out.

“ There are twin Genii, who, strong and mighty, Under their guidance mankind retain; And the name of the lovely one ia Pleasure, And the name of the loathly one is Pain. Never divided, where one can enter Ever the other comes close behind ; And he who in Pleasure his thoughts would centre Surely Pain in the search shall find! “ Alike they are, though in much they differ— Strong resemblance is ’twixt the twain ; So that sometimes you may question It can be Pleasure you feel, or Pain. Thus ’tis, that whatever of deep emotion Stirreth the heart —be it grave or gay, Tears are the Symbol—from feeling’s ocean These are the fountains that rise to-day. “ Should not this teach us calmly to welcome Pleasure when smiling our hearths beside? If she be the substance, how dark the shadow; Close does it follow the near allied. Or if Pain long o’er our threshold hover, Let us not question but Pleasure nigh Bideth her time her face to discover, Rainbow of Hope in a clouded sky.” Yes, it was a good time. To look at us round that dinner table, you’d have said there was nothing but pleasure in the world. Not but that ever and anon the poor young gipsy woman’s troubled face and her sad wild eyes would rise between me and the light. The afternoon was getting on when I got back to the glade with William Whitney (for we had all gone strolling about after dinner) and found some of the ladies there. The M ater had gone into Rednal’s cottage to talk to his wife, Jessy, and Anna was below in the deli. A clean-looking, stout old lady, in a light cotton gown and white apron, a mob cap with a big border and bow of ribbon in front of it, turned round from talking to them, smiled, and made me a curtsey. The face seemed familiar to me: but where had I seen it before ? Helen Whitney, seeing my puzzled look, spoke up in her free manner. ‘ Have you no memory, Johnny Ludlow ? Don’t you remember Mrs Ness ?—and the fortunes she told us on the cards?’ It came upon me with a rush. That driz zlingGood Friday afternoon at Miss Devcca’s, long ago, and Helen smuggling up the old lady from downstairs to tell her fortune. But what brought her here ? There seemed to be no coonction between Miss Deveen’s house in town and Briar Wood in Worcestershire. I could not have been more at ssa had I seen a Chinese lady from Pekin. Miss Deveeh laughed. ‘ And yet it is so easy of explanation, Johnny, sc simple and straightforward. Mrs 'ess chances to be aunt to Kednal’s wife, and she is staying down hero with them.’ Simple it was as are most other puzzles when you get the clue. The old Wojpjj

was a great protegee of Miss Deveen’s, who had known her through her life of misfortune : but Miss Deveen did not before know offjher relationship to Kednal’s wife or that she was staying at their cottage. They had been talking of that past afternoon and the fortune-telling in it, when I and Bill came np, ‘ And what I told you, miss, came true—now didn’t it ? ’ cried Mrs Ness to Helen. ‘ True ! Why, you told me nothing I ’ retorted Helen, ‘ There was nothing in the fortune. Yon said there was nothing in the cards.’ ‘I remember it,’ said Mother Ness ; ‘remember it well. The cards showed no husband for yon then, young lady ; they might tell different now. But they showed some trouble about it, I recollect. ’ Helen’s face fell. There had indeed been trouble. Trouble again and again. Bichard Foliott, the false, had brought it to her ; and so did Charles Leafchild, aowlyinginhis grave at Worcester : not to speak of poor Slingsby Temple. Helen had fgot over all those crosses now, and was looking up again. She was of a nature to look up again from whatever evil befell her, short of losing her head off her shoulders. All dinner time she had been flirting with Featherston’s nephew. This suggestion of Mrs Ness, ‘the cards might tell different now,’ caught hold of her mind. Her colour slightly deepened, her eyes sparkled, ‘ Have you the cards with yon now, Mrs Ness ?’ ‘ Ay, to be sure, young lady I never come away from home without my cards. They be in the cottage yonder.’ ‘ Then I should like my fortune told again.’ * Oh, Helen, how can you be so silly!’ cried Lady Whitney. ‘ Silly! Why, mamma, it is good fun. You go and fetch the cards, Mrs Ness.’ ‘ I and Johnny nearly got our fortune told to-day,’ put in Bill, while Mrs Ness stood where she was, hardly knowing what to bo at. ‘Wo came upon a gipsy woman in the the wood, and she wanted to promise us a wife apiece. A little girl was with her that may have been stolen : she was too fair to be that brown woman’s child.’ ‘ It must have been the Norths,’ exclaimed Mrs Ness. * Was there some tinware by ’em, air ; and some rabbit skins ?’ ‘Yes. Both, The rabbit skins were hanging out to dry. ’ ‘ Ay, it’s the Norths,’ repeated Mrs Ness. ‘ Rednal said he saw North yesterday, and guessed they’d lighted their camp lire not far off’

‘Who are the Norths? Gipsies ? ’ ‘The wife is a gipsy, sir ; born and bred. He is a native of these parts, and superior ; but he took to an idle, wandering life, and married the gipsy girl for her beauty. She was Bertha Lee then.’ 4 Why it is quite a romance,’ said Miss Deveen, amused. * And so it is, ma’m. Eednal told me all on’t. They tramp the country, selling their tins and collecting rabbit skins ’ 4 And is the child theirs ? ’ asked Bill. 4 Ay, sir, it be. But she don’t take after her mother : she’s like him, her skin fair as alabaster. You’d not think, Eednal says, that she’d got a drop o’ gipsy blood in her veins. North might ha’ done well had he only turned out steady ; been just the odds o’ what he is - a poor tramp.’ ‘Oh, come, never mind the gipsies,’ cried Helen, impatiently. 4 You go and bring the cards, Mrs Ness.’ One can’t go in for stilts at a picnic, or wisdom either, and when Mrs Ness brought her cards (which might have been cleaner) none of them made any objection ; even Cattledon looked on, grimly tolerant. 4 But you can’t think there’s anything in it -that the cards tell true,’ cried Lady Whitney to the old woman. 4 Ma’am, to be sure they do. I believe in 'em from my very heart. And so, I make bold to say, would everybody here believe, if they had read the things upon ’em that I’ve read, and seen how surely they’ve come to pass.’ They would not contradict her openly ; only smiled a little among themselves. Mother Ness was busy with the cards, laying them out for Helen’s fortune. I drew near to listen. 4 You ’ook just as though you put faith in it,’ whispered Bill to me. 4 1 don’t put faith in it. I should not like to be so foolish. But, William, what she told Helen before did come true.’ Well, Helen’s 4 fortune ’ was told again. It sounded just as uneventful as the one told that rainy afternoon long ago—for we wet e now some years older than we were then. Helen Whitney’s future, according to the cards, or to Dame Ness’s reading of them, would be all plain sailing, smooth and easy, and unmarked alike by events and by care. A most desirable career, some people would think, but Helen looked the picture of desolation. (To be continued.')