LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1220, 31 January 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

HALF A MINUTE LATE

London Society.

(Concluded.) Harold Maynard looked at the new witness—and the fatal half minute descended from the clock face, no longer a grinning imp, but tragically incaruale in Alice Despard. She was about to come forward as avenger—the harshest and sharpest scourge that Fate or time could ever iind for him now.

And yet —as their eyes met—who shall explain electric sympathies ! Though his reason told him this, he knew otherwise. J hero is marvellous magic at times in that sudden Hash from eye to eye. She had obvioiuly come but lately from her b<nl in the hospital; her glow look* d hardly natural and as if the fever were still in her veins. Harold f.dt a strange pride in her thrill through him, as if he would rather meet his doom from her hands than from any that were meaner. If it were not love ihat ran through the air of the police court from eyes to eyes, there can be no tuch thing ; and love conscious and visible. Love, thank Heaven, is not like Letty, and his blind to vulgarities, though clear sighted about otlK-r things. ' Who are you V 'Alice Despard.' ' The daughter of—' ' Yes, fir.' ' And what have you to say ?' 'The prisom r ia notguilty ' Of course all the people laughed at the notion - of a young girl, a mere witness, liking upon herself the function of a jury as if every one of those who laughed had not been privately doing the same thiug. The magistrate himself smiled for a moment.

' Tell me why you think so.' {|' I don't think. 1 know it, sir.' "Tint might bo delightful nonsense to the court, but it was none to Harold Maynard. It was consolation in extremity. • What are you V «I taught till till she became ill; then I had to wait on her. 1 had a little money ; it did not last for long. But long enough, sir—nearly. We had to live as—as we best gotild at the end.' 'You Uieau, I suppose, that the money found on the prisoner could not be yours,

your mother's, because she had none ? la that what you mean ?' Yes, rir.'

Put it i-o happened that the foreo of her argument was cms dcrably weakened by the , fact that a pauper had lately died with two hundred pounds in notes hidden in an old Stocking. The old lady might have been a miser, but still the point was something. ' Have you anything more to say ?' ( Yes, sir—he is not guilty. The money was not ours, and he closed her eyes and watched her all night through. He came to see mo at the hospital aud brought me her wedding ring, on my finger now. He—' ' i hen'—began the magistrate. But a new witness rose froin near him on the bench. ' I have something to say before you th'nk of committal.' It was old Despard. ' Well ?' *My name is John Despard, merchant, of London and Hong Kong. I'm well known. And I say that neither the prisoner n r the —Mrs Despard, nor anybody could have known of the notes. Nobody ever touched them, and it was not the prisoner who secreted them.' 'Who then?' 'lt was I—thirty T years ago. That portrait is of me. I placed the notes there with my own hands.' Li t it be clearly understood, that not Harold Maynard, but old Despard is the hero of this history. Harold had done nothing heroic. He had only wasted half a minute, and looked after a girl whom he had nearly killed. For the rest he had been a hero in no more than the sense in which the heroes of Greek tragedies were heroes—in being the football of the three Fates whenever they were disposed for a game. But for old Despard to get up in open court, though but in Bow-street, and tell his story, was a pisce of genuine heroism for a martyr to gout, who hated everybody near his toes and cared nothing for a soul beyond them. VII. Not that he told all in court —for he was a man who kept to the point, and a great deal concerned him only. When the picture of the brown-eyed, brown-faced young man was curiously handed along the bench for inspection under the eye of the police sergeant, its guardian, what dim but never-to-be forgotten springtides returned to the heart of the etill brown eyed but iron-haired man !-springtides when the sun was bright for him also, and when gout was unknown. Did he remember for whom that picture had been painted, and when ? Did he remember his first love ? Why, men will forget, their last sooner—especially when the first and the last are one and the same. For Letty's mother had not been particularly lovable ; and that perhaps accounted a little for Letty, apart from her beauty. But Jane Morris had been eminently lovab'e—and she accounted for Alice, the girl with the one virtue of standing up for the man she loved, without rhyme, reason, or power to help him, just because he was down. Of course old Despard, then young Despard—very young-had mariied Jane Morris, who of course ha.i not a penny. And of course the old Despard of those days parted them; and the course of true love, not the less for being married love, ran rough, and in the old groove ; and the husband had to go out to Oh na in a slow sailer, and the wife was to be cared for at home It was then that yi ung Despard sent his wife his picture stuffed with bank notes—all he had—and worked his way out before t r e mast by way of compensation, aud was reported dead —to his wife; and she disappeared in trying to live ; and when the young man came back in those unletter-writiug slow-sailing days it was to find her dead as well as gone ; so he was told. And now it seemed that the very money had been thrown away. It was more than s-trarige to find himself face to face, then aud there, with his own young self of thirty years ago Aud there in the witness box stood Jane's child ; yes, as like Jane a" her age as his own child could be, and—well, he forgot the gout, and was a man, ' The prisoner is discharged.' Tbat woke old Despard from his reverie, a'd his waking left him very much ashamed. He had made a fool of himself in public - a thing he had never done in his lite before, though in private no doubt as frequently as most men. He had raked up the ghosts of dead days, and set them up as targets for a Bow street jeer. Be had hi* heart: he would have opened his purse sooner. 'The carriage,' he growled savagely to Tom Winter. And bring me the girl. I can't speak to her here.' ' You mean to adopt her—to acknowledge her?' «What's that to vou ?' VIII. 'No, sir, thank you.'

It was Alice speaking to eld Despard. ' You won't Don't you know you are my daughter —my first wife's daughter' Do you think I'll let you go out teaching again, or live differently from Letty V ' Am I your daughter ?' ' Whose else should you be ? You're as like me in the nose as two peas ; but you've got Jane's gray eyes. And that fellow that unpunctual fellow Maynard—l'm half sarry I got him off after spoiling a good dinner ; chat fellow closing Jane's eyes ! I wish wdth all my heart I'd let him be hanged.' ' It was being with her, sir, that kept him '

'As if I didn't know that! As if that made me like him any the better ! As if I didn't know thatj 1 ought to have—no, it wouldn't have done ; he'd have been loosing his confounded time in Hong Kong. I'll get him something somewhere, and let him go to the devil his own way; and you'll come with mc.' ' Sir-' 'And don't call me sir.'

' I have promised—to go—with him.' Letty, had she been standing side by side with her sister before the glass, would not have been pleased with the comparison just them

'With him? Who's him?' ' Mr Maynard asked me to marry him, and I said yes.' ' And when, pray, did Mr Maynard ask you to marry hin« ? Why, you havn't seen him one minute since he was discharged.' Alice smiled. Was old Despard so obsolete a lover as to forgot what one minute, nay, what half a minute can do?

'I see. He thinks he is going to get one of old Despard's daughters, after all. Then all 1 can say is, if you go with him. you don't get a penny for me. I'll Rive that very two thousand to a hospital - .St. Martin's, if yon Jike-but—' Alice smiled once more. How could sht* tell that what her father hinted about her lover might not be true '. But she did tell, somehow. 'How do you mean to live ?'ashed old Despard, who caught the smile, and was not; soothed. ' I don't know.' 'You don't know? Then, by the Lord Harry, you shall know! I'll-I'll—l'll—-confound you, I'll send you both to HongKoug !' IX. On the deck, not of the Ganges, but of Euphrates, Harold Maynard and A'iee his wife were standing arm in arm, watching the every-day wonders of the sea, and feeling the every-day wonders of love in one another. He was on his way to fortune after all Suddenly there wa=» a commotion near them. A wave bad carried something under the stern, aud a boat had been lowered. It was only a glass bottle. But that means much, five hundred miles from short. The captain of the Euphrates opened it, andgread : ' Lat. —, long. —. (ranges of London, for Hong'Kong, sinking with all hands. Boats swamped. Forward to Preston and Co., Southampton.' That was all Harold looker! gravely at his wife. She knew all that was passing in his mind. If he had not been half a minute too late he would have sailed in the Gauges, have never seen Alice, iud been at this very moment a the bottom of tho sea.