LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1223, 4 February 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

FATHER POMEROY'S LEGACY. London boeiety. (Continued) CHAPTER in. FARMER POMEROY'b LEU AC Y. About a year after Annie Astry's settlement ah Cliffe, the Reverend Felix Onslow was sitting alone one evening in his lodgings at Gatcombe, in Devonshire, his head up.'n his hand, in a moode of most unwonted seriousness ; for in character he was like his cousin vaft. fiancee— gay, buoyant, and sanguine. Neither the scene nor the time was likely to raise the spirits of a man disposed to take a saturino view of things. The hour was that one between light and dark which is so depressing at the close of a wild wet gusty day. The wind was rising fast into storm pitch, and the rain was beating with increasing fury against the one window placed whimsically at the side, instead of in the centre, of the outer wall. The cottage was of the piecemeal order of construction, two thrown into one, with a bit added here and there as the capenter owner increased his family responsibilities, or resolved upon taking a lodger. Mr Onslow's sitting-room, the best, was a queer cabinet-like affair, entered by two steps—a perfect trap for the unwary—and abounding in angles and corners. A fire might have made it more cheerful; but a Btrong aud healthy young man feels some natural hesi tation about ordering a fire in August, even though the day be dull and his spirits in need of invigoration. Mr Onslow's cause of trouble was a queer one, yet real enough. He had lately got settled, as he thought, at Gatcorabe, with an income of £2OO a year as curate in charge for a recto r , who had been struck at middle age by sudden deafness, and who was hale enough to be likely to want a locum tenant for many years, Gatcombe being a fat family living. But Mr Onslow's i 1-fate had ju&tputinto the rector's head that he could preach extempore ; and he had tried it, not very much to the satisfaction of others, perhaps, but sufficiently so to himself. Gatcombe was a small agricultural parish, hardly affording work for one healthy man; and the rector had told Mr Onslow that his assistance would not be required after Michaelmas, as he meant to resume at that time his parochial duties. Mr Onslow had a little money of his own; had a fair fortune in p ospect, and upon the strength of his apparently settled position they were to have been married at Christmas ; but now he saw delay stariug him in the face As Mr Onslow was very much in love, and Kate's father was very prudent, he leant his curly head upon his hands, thinking he must write at once to tell Kate of the necessity for his seeking a new cure, but most unwilling to grieve her, for he knew she was as deeply attached to him as he was to her. A peal at the outer bell startled him—it was not likely to be for any one but him at that time of the evening. In a minute the carpenter's wife appeared, baby in arms, a shock head behind her in the doorwiy-that of the country lad who acted as messenger. * If you please, sir, Farmer Pomeroy, over to Gatcombe Hollow, is dying, and wants to see yi.u particular at once.' Mr Onslow knew ths name wvll; it was that of a small farmer whose unsocial solitary life was a proverb in the country round; a bachelor, with no near ties, and como from a distant cyuntry. He had never been seen at church, and had been mentioned to the curate by the rector as a man he would find it useless to try to conciliate. JM, shup sent for, Mr Ouslow koew he

mnst go, and that at once. He put on a thick overcoat, therefore, and prepared to accompany the messenger. They did not talk much, f'u* even had the broad Devonshire and the cultivated English been easily mutually comprehensible, rhe storm's gathering force would have rendered conversation difficult.

liatcombe is a village of one hilly street, opening out upou a high moorland r'djjo. As they breasted it, the wind rushed at them as is would take them up and whirl them as feathers in its grim grasp. After a mile of struggliug thus against its force, they were thankful to enter the shelter of a deep narrow lane, descending sharply towards a hollow, and whose high hedges kept off the blast that whistled wildly in the tree tops as they neared a patch of woodland clustering round the low straggling buildings of a small mossgrown farmhouse. Mt Onslow followed the lad up a narrow grassgrown path, and into the doorway, which opened into a room half parlour, half kitchen. The invalid was there alone, seated in a wooden chair; ho was a gaunt, tall, gray-haired man of seventy, with hard features, a wrinkled weather-boaten -complexion, jand keen light eyes with overhanging eyebrows. He gave a sign of recognition, and motioned to the clergyman to take a chair near him, but made no immediate attempt at opening a conversation. It is a difficult thing for a man of feeling and reflection to address a total stranger, so much his superior in age, in a strain of warning and exhortation. Mr Onslow knew nothing of this farmer's character or antecedents, &o. As yet quite inexperienced in parish work, he hesitated as to the best way of making a beginning. Farmer Pomeroy saw and understood his difficulty; he broke the ice.

«I haven't sent for you to talk to me paraonlike,' he said, in atone naturally gruff and harsh, but singularly free in accent from th 3 broad Doric prevailing round Gatcombe. •As the tree falls, so must it lie : there's Scripture warrant for that, and I bean't a-going to cringe and change my tune because I'm near my end; that would be cowardlike. I've been a hard and unfriendly man ; but I have had my troubles to sour me. If I have left undone almost all I ought to have done, I have not harmed any neighbour maliciously. There's one old wrong which it may not be too late to repair : it lies heavier on my conscience now than sins that are greater.' His voice was wavering and unsteady; he paused a moment and Mr Onslow spoke, *lf it is bnsiuess that you have to talk of, might it not be better to apply to a lawyer or to the rector ? I am no business man.'

♦ I've no opinion of lawyers, and the rector and me have nothing in common,' interrupted Farmer Pomeroy. * He's wrapped up in his books and his garden. There wasn't much in him to begin with, and years haven't ripened him. It takes good wins to mellow with age; your poor stuff runs to vinegar. I took a fancy to you, Mr Onslow, the first time I saw you ; for, odd as you may think it, you remind me of the young gentleman I used to see when I was up at College in in Cambridge myself, better not fifty yean ago.' Felix Onslow started: the old man, roughened by daily toil and exposure, had the homeliest strain of common sense in ton* and asppct. He conld not be raving, surely. • • You are surprised ; but there is nothing very out of the way in my story when you cnme to hear it all told. I will tell it, and then you will know what I want you to do,' said Father Pomeroy 'My father was bailiff to a rich old squire up in the north of Devon ; he was a queer gentleman, a bachelor, that had quarrelled, one by one, with the few left belonging to him. He took a fancy to me. I daresay I don't look like it now. but I was a pretty lad, a mother's darliDg. I had no mother, though, more's the pity—it might have been better for me if I had. It was as much, perhaps, to spite his own relations as to benefit me that the squire took me by the hand ; but, anyhow, he sent me to Greta-bridge Grammar school, and then to Cambridge; and my father thought my fortune as good as made, for the Fquire began to throw out hints about the property being entirely in his own hands, to do what he liked with, and my father guessed that he meant leaving it to me. We lived in a lovely country place, and the school I went to was ia a little town that had decayed till there were scarcely twenty lads in the neighbourhood fit to go to it; so that you may guess I had seen little enough of the worM when I got to Cambridge. My father knew nothing about the colleges—it wasn't likely he would - and the squire knew little more; they sent me to St. Julian's, then known as the Tavern; the men drank so, and were so rackety, my head was turned by the freedom of the life. I rode, sported, and drank with the best, or the worst of them, and the end of it was that by twelve months time the master wrote to tell the squire that I wan doing no good, and that he had better take me away. He was in a fury when he heard my goings on ; he came up to Cambridge, called in my bills, and found I had spent a thousand pounds on foolery; he swore he wouldn't pay a penny, and kept his word. He cast me off, and I came down here, as far as I could from the sight of everyone that knew me. I had seen enough of country life to earn my bread, but I lived solitary, miking no friends. I never got enough to raise myself much higher than the labouring men about me, and them I couldn't stoop to. I never paid my debts ; I wanted what little I made to save for hiring a little farm. I wanted to be independent.

x 7b hit fotitinued.)