LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1411, 23 August 1878, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE HOUSE ACROSS THE STREET.

A Story in Two Chapters.

All the Tear Round.”] ( Continued.)

Yet she had known trouble in her life, and had been crossed in her dearest wishes by the old man to whom she devoted her life He told me all about it one evening, when, Magdalen having gone to the opera with a friend, I was playing piquet with him in her stead.

The talk had turned upon her. I don’t think the tea was strong enough, and he began to grumble at her absence. I thought of the various sorts of tea —cold, smoky, and flavorless —with which my cook was in the habit of favoring me, and asked him what he would do when she was married, adding, with an absurd anxiety for the answer which even struck myself, that I supposed he did not expect to keep her long with him. He looked up from his cards, frowning. ‘What do you mean doctor? You don’t think . But, pshaw? She sees no one here who would take her fancy ; and the old affair was over long ago I don’t believe she even remembers it now. Come, you doctors have a way of looking into people’s feelings through their faces. Don’t

think she looks as well and happy as any girl you know ? ’ ‘ Quite happy and very well,’ I answered decided, and he smiled. My words evidently pleased him.

‘Ha! so I say. lam glad you agree with me, for it’s all owing to me. She wouldn’t have looked well or happy if she had married some ne’er do-well who would have brought her to beggary, and run away from her in a twelvemonth. Eh. what do you think ? ’ ‘ I think such a fate would have killed her. Was there ever —any chance of it ? ’ It was not a fair question, and I hesitated before putting it. The old man only laughed, however. * Chance I It was touch and go. She wasn’t twenty-one, when a fellow, a younger son with a heap of debts at his back, and not a farthing to bless himself with, fell in love with her, and succeeded in entrapping her into a promise. I was away at the time; and, unfortunately, her letter enclosing one from him missed me; and she interpreted something in the next I wrote her into consent; and positively considered herself engaged to the scamp. Egad! I promise you the engagement didn’t last long after I returned. She was under age, jso that I could have claimed her obedience, anyhow ; but my Magdalen’s a good girl, and I had been father and mother both to her since my poor wife’s death. She didn’t need to be forced into her duty ; and, as to the young adventurer, I warrant yon I didn’t waste soft words on him, when I showed him to the door. He begged hard for a last interview; but I said ; ‘No, you’ve made my child unhappy enough as it is. I won’t have you make her more so ; ’ and I didn’t.’

‘Then that was the end of it? They never met again ? ’ ‘ Never. I took her away next day ; and, though he wrote to her on the following one, I thought it was one of those cases where a father has a right to exercise his discretion. The letter is there now,’ nodding his head to a tall escritoire in the corner of the room. * I’m an honorable man, and I never even opened it. I daresay it’s full of ranting and love-sick vows; but they’Jl do no harm there, and as f r Magdalen—look at her! ’ Yes, she was very calm and fair to look at. Yet, with the glad feeling that it was so, and that the girlish love of six years back was, as the old man sa : d, a dream scarcely remembered, I could not repress a shudder at the pitiless way in which it had been stamped out, and an emotion of pity for the poor boy, who for a few days had thought to possess a treasure, which, in that moment, I knew it would have been death to me to lose. And she? Up to my mind rose a vision of her as I had first seen her, frail and white, with drooping head and languid step. Su r ely, she too must have suffered ; but, at least, it was over now—and, doubtless, it was for hapuiness. From my heart—a heart —a heart still aching from the discovery of how precious she was to me—l hoped that it might be so. Mr Robarts took up his cards again with a serene air. ‘I hardly think Magdalen will marry,’ he said cheerfully. ‘She is difficult, very difficult to please; and, as you see, she loves me, and is quite harpy in her homo, Perhaps, when I am gone indeed . . . but it is your lead, I think ? ’ and he returned to the game with renewed interest ‘A man habituated to selfishness,’ I said to myself; but I had no right to pursue the object, and there it might have rested for ever if an incident had not recalled it. I had promised to lend Magdalen a book she wanted, and on the evening following this 1 went across the street t > give it her, and, hearing she was in the dining-room, passed in there unannounced The next moment, however, I was sorry that I had done so, for, to my great surprise and distress, I found her c'ying. Of course she started up at my entrance, brushing the tears from her eyes, and I dont know which of us felt most embarrassment. I fear I showed mine and the concern I felt very visibly ; for she recovered herself almost at once, and there was something so sweet and gracious in the way in which she received my bungling apology, seeming to put her own annoyance completely out of sight in the effort to set me at ease, that I was surprised when, just as I was leaving, she stopped me by saying with more girlish agitation than I had over seen in her, and yet with a frank dignity which always seemed a part of her nature. ‘ Dr. Elliot, you were surprised to find me crying just now; but I am not in any trouble. You look so sorry that I must tell you so.’ I suppose I did not look satisfied ; for she tried to smile and came nearer, leanmg her clasped hands on the table. ‘ You were speaking last night to papa about ray marrying. lie was not so well this nu ruing and —and the idea fretted him. Pray do not so again, ever. I do not mean to marry. He wants me. He could not do without me ; and he is right in what he told you, I am quite happy, perfectly happy, and contented here with him—happier than I could be with anyone or anywhere else.’ * You are young to say that, my dear,’ I said gently. You see I was past forty, an old man compared to her ; and the tears in her eyes made me feel more tenderly to her. ‘ I am not too young to know what is right and good for me,’ she answered. ‘My father has only me in the world, and I ’ Her eyes wandered out to the green-blue of the twilight sky, and fixed themselves there with a strange, wistful look, as if she were appealing to someone far, far away. There was a little cheat) ring at the third finger of her left hand. She covered it gently with the othe - , stroking it backwards and forwards softly. * How could I have had any happiness apart from his? And he has been so tender to me always. Other girls have mothers ; but I the study of his life has been that I should not miss mine Think what it would be to him now to miss me. And pray, pray nev -r say anything to him to make him fear that he will.’

‘ My dear.' I said again, ‘you may trust me. Vour father has a good daughter. I hope Heaven will bless her.’ I hardly thought she heard me, for her eyes were still fixed on the sky in that faraway gaze; only, after a moment, a grave sweet smile came into them, and she held out her hand to me, saying ; ‘ Thank yon, doctor; I do trust you already. Indeed, I think you are one of the best friends I have.’ And then she added, with a little laugh, as if trying to shake off the least remains of her sadness : ‘lt seems strange that we should have grown to know each other so well after only six months acquaintance, when for five years we have been living with only this narrow street between us, and never even dreaming of each other’s existence. Why, the one thing I knew of your house was that it had a brassplate on the door, and I don’t once recollect taking the trouble to look across, or to ask whether it belonged to a doctor ora dancingmistress, until the day papa had that fit,’ Not once 1 And all those five years her house had been the one home-spot in my toilsome life ! Yet, after all, it was only natural. What was there on my side of the way, An ugly middle-aged man and a dingy house. It was she who made her side what it was to me. For the rest, I was content enough at learning from her own lips that she was as happy as she looked, and would not change her lot for that which had once been offered her, if she had had the opportunity, ‘Poor lad! But I daresay he, too, has consoled himself, ’ I said to myself as I went away, ( To he. continued.)