LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1257, 29 March 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

ORDEAL BY TIME; OR, THE MEMORABLE TRYST. A Story of Two Epochs. BY W. W. FEN FT. (Continued.) ‘You are a strange, odd girl,’ he replied, still without lookiug at her, ‘ and how you have got hold of these ideas puzzles me, for I swear I love. . . ‘ Nay, Allan.’ she broke in, 1 don’t try to deceive me, because you are not deceiving yourself; you know what I say is tine, 1 do not blame you for it, because, I repea', it is not your fault. One has always heard that men’s feelings are different to woman’s in these respects; they are not as stable—they can’t help it —a ce tain degree of fickleness is natural to them all; and where a man’s character is good, true, and generous, as yours is, they perhaps do not affect his real worth. But a woman who has once had the deep passionate devotion of such a man laid at her feet, as you have laid it at mine, she cannot brook the falling off, the cooling in any degree, of such love ; she hesitates to think of him as her husband, aud this is why so much misery comes after marriage when the wife sees the change, the uncontrollable change. Now I see it in you, before we are married; aud is it not better that I should see it now than hereafter, when it ( would be too late, and when repentance, being vain, might even kill the last spark of friendly feelieg existing between us ? I say—though I say it so badly ; I know that you follow me in your inmost heart—why not, then, admit it openly? admit that you would have your freedom again ? I entreat you, do not put me to the pain of uttering these words, of making this appeal for nothing ; for you well know that, whatever the admission costs you to make, I must suffer equally. But I should suffer more were it made in the future, when it would be too late, than f shall now. Now, if we part, wo may not lose our esteem for each other ; later on, we might even come to hate-each othe r ,’ She had grown rapid and earnest in the delivery of these pregnant sentences ; they had both walked the Lister while she talked; but as she uttered the last words she stopped suddenly and took his arm, striving to turn his face towards her. lie answered the movement, and now, for the first time, looked full into her eyes. ‘ Je«sie,’ he said, ‘I am an idiot, and you are the most noble, high-souled girl in existence. Instead of speaking aud thinking of me as you do, had you loaded me with reproaches and heaped upon me every form of obloquy—had you treated me as the most despicable of men, as 1 am—you could not have made me suffer as I do. No opiniou that you could have formed would have been meaner than the one I have of myself; but when you speak of m.y goodness, kindness, and so forth—well, it serves me ngnt I i dogOTYO to be puaished j but I bwom I

can’t explain why or what it is which has altered my feeling. You are quite right in thinking they have been beyond my own control—for they have, indeed they have. I have seen no other woman, have never seen any woman I could love as well as you. I shall never love any other woman as I have loved you ; and yet, the old, deep, intense, mysterious feeling, which is absolute love and nothing else, is gone, or faded into a ghosfof what it was; and you have found it out—have put it, indeed, more pa’pably before me than I was able to do for myself. You are right, I admit it; and,’ he added as they now again walked rapidly forward along the sands, ‘ In spite of it all, you only do me justice when you say that I still care for you as a brother might. I can’t make myself out, and that’s a fact,’ he sighed throwing up his arms desparingly. T hey had now reached a part cf the coast which had been much groyned and shored up, and the walking became somewhat difficult. For a while, in the earnestness of their conversation, they had not heeded there obstructions, hue at length they sat down upon some planking and pi es, which, though dark with green and slippery seaweed, had partially dried during low water. The shore—nowhere what could be called wild, consisting in the main of sloping, irregular grassy knolls, grew hereabouts, however, a little more abrupt, assuming occasionally a cliff-like character; for the land, in addition to an increase in its height, tended so much seawards that it came in for the full force of t,he strong tides, which, as in most estuaries, ran very rapidly, becoming at certain points what are known as ‘ races.’

Some hundred yards beyond the spot where the two speakers had sat down, there rose a mass of high, brownish, clayey, perpendicular cliff, surmounted by the ruins of an ancient aboey. We have nothing to do with the traditions connected with it. When it was built it stood far back from the sea; but that great ‘blue dragon,’as the ocean has been called, ‘whose mission it is to eat up the land,’ had been for centuries making such ravenous meals off it just here, that it would long ago have swallowed it up, ruins and all, had not the *7 rinity Board taken measures to preserve the towers of the edifice as landmarks for manners. By dint of running out the aforesaid groynes in all directions, and by building a strong apron of sea-wall immediately round the base of promontory on which the remains of the abbey stood, tbe tides had been so far stemmed as to prevent their doing more of late than nibble at the coast Nevertheless, they had managed by degrees, here and there, to consume enough to form many a biggish bight or bay, and it was just in the middle of one of these that Lieut. Allan Hardwicke, R.K.A., and Miss Jessie Darrant found themselves ensconed.

To their right and left the horns of the bay, the natural termination of which was prolonged by the tall groyne on either hand, shut out the view, making their privacy more complete. It was a retired, not to say lonely spot, and under the fair sky of that particular summer morning was well fitted for a lovers’ tryst. Too much occupied by their own emotions they had taken as little heed, however, of the change creeping over the heavens as they had of all other outward matters Wind, tide, laud, and sky might not hare existed for all they knew. Both had, for the last half-hour, seemed simply to be drifting as in a dream ; therefore it was nothing to them that the blue had turned into a leaden grey—that the dry sand over which they had passed ten minutes before was now covered by lapping, tumbling wavelets —or that the quiet air was ruffled by gusty blasts. Both ta'ked on rapidly as they sat, and much to the same purport as hitherto; she showing him her willingness to sacrifice herself sooner than hold him to the engagement, of which her true woman’s instinct told her he repented; he accepting the sacrifice with what grace he could, yet not sparing nor attempting to defend himself—still inwardly relieved that the initiative had been taken by her, and that he was free; regretting, yet gratified ; ashamed of the advantage he had gained, yet honestly not will to relinquish it; admiring hers, but condemning his own conduct; resting, in his perplexity and the conflicting emotions by which he was torn, on the hope that they might so part as to leave no tinge of acrimony anywhere. (To he eonfinvert.)